Writer(s): Eric Red
Starring: Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jeffery DeMunn
Movies like The Hitcher are a rare breed: It’s a movie so implausible and idiotic that, by all accounts, it should be simple to cast aside and forget. But its weaknesses, at least up until the second half, actually become its strengths; its desolate, barren landscape allows the film to work by giving it an atmosphere that borders on the surreal, while the killer’s impossibly-constant presence gives the work an unshakable sense of evil. It becomes the antithesis of its own genre. It doesn’t try to build you up or creep you out, nor is it concerned with typical horror tactics like fake scares, or “reality as a dream”; it simply throws one threat right after another at our hero from the first few minutes, all the way up until the end. If it weren’t for a shaky final act that inexplicably decides to break down and follow the horror formula, this very well could have been one of the greatest horror films of all time. Even in its finished, flawed form, its infinitely more potent than it has any right to be; a slasher film that cancels out all the “boring” parts in between the killings, and focuses on the killer stalking its victim over the entire movie.
C. Thomas Howell plays Jim Halsey, a man who is transporting a car from Illinois, to California. As the miles wear on, fatigue and exhaustion set in for poor Jim, and after he dozes off at the wheel and very nearly runs into a semi head on, he decides the best possible way for him to stay awake isn’t three shots of espresso, or scoring some speed, but rather picking up a hitchhiker to keep him company. See what I mean? This movie is pretty darn stupid.
It is certainly not his lucky day: Out of all the hitchers he could have had, he winds up with John Ryder (Rutger Hauer, in the role that he was born to play), a mysterious, creepy man who sets off red flags immediately by refusing to tell Jim where he’s headed. A little ways into their journey, before the depths of Ryder’s depravity is evident, they pass a stalled car sitting by the side of the road. Jim wants to stop to make sure the motorist is okay, but John has other ideas, pushing down on Jim’s leg so that he speeds passed it. At first, John is mum about why he did that, to Jim’s constant interrogation; after things seem to go back to normal, he reveals that the reason the car was stalled is because he killed the driver, and he would be killing Jim next. A struggle ensues, and all thanks to an improperly-closed door, Jim manages to shove him out of the car and make his escape.
But John’s smile as he slowly comes to his senses on the freeway tells us all that we need to know; that he sees this as a game, and in Jim he has found a capable contestant. Initially, we think that John’s ultimate goal is to get revenge and kill the one man that has escaped his clutches, but after each encounter, his motives seem to be going in a different direction. Is he merely toying with his prey before finishing him off? Or is he trying to psychologically destroy him as punishment for his daring escape?
It isn’t long after Jim celebrates his perceived victory that he is reintroduced to his would-be killer: A few miles later, a family on their way to vacation passes by him. In the backseat, playing with their young child, is John. Jim frantically tries to warn them of their new passenger’s intention, but in doing so, once again nearly ends up hitting a truck head-on, and has to swerve off the road to avoid becoming roadkill. In a scene of quiet effectiveness, he soon passes their stranded vehicle. Deep inside, he knows what happened, but desperately wants to believe that John was only kidding. He gets out, hoping to find a family alive, and simply in need of maintenance; whatever he sees, it leads him to retch all over the dusty desert sand.
But Jim’s problems with the hitcher aren’t just limited to direct encounters, as John makes sure to set him up for misery in any way he can. Like by informing the police of a murder, and then framing Jim for it by placing a bloody knife in his clothes (even though at no point, at least that we see, could it have been even remotely possible for him to do that), an act that sets off a furious manhunt. Jim is captured while trying enjoy a cheeseburger at a local diner, prepared for him by Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the stereotypical simple “small-town” girl.
This is where the film starts to take even its own wide net of implausibility for granted, and starts to take a downhill roll: having only met him a few short minutes ago, and with absolutely nothing to go on in the way of evidence, she makes up her mind that he is innocent. Later on, the duo find themselves in the midst of a police chase, against incompetent cops that can’t even hit either one of them from as point blank as is physically possible in a speeding car. And then John shows up, to eliminate the police threat so that he can continue to harass Jim for his own morbid entertainment.
This storyline fails, if for no other reason than even the writers seemed to know that Nash is a completely unnecessary, throwaway character. She serves no purpose, other than to (literally) serve him a cheeseburger, and yet somehow, and unconvincingly, becomes a key part of the story. It’s almost as if studio execs demanded there be a love interest for Jim in a rather half-hearted attempt to appeal to a wider market, and it comes as no surprise that their short…acquaintanceship, for lack of a better term, just feels tacky and half-baked.
But you know what, ignore every complaint that I have lodged, and check this movie out anyway. Rutger Hauer’s underrated performance is at least on par with Michael Rooker’s in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer; dare I say, it might be even better. The mark of a great performance is in the eyes, and Hauer’s has a cold sense of evil that chillingly makes it seem like it’s not acting at all. Many actors would have sensed the B-grade material in the screenplay, and decided to ham up the role, but Hauer wisely goes in the opposite direction, instead delivering his lines with such matter-of-factness that it’s almost impossible not to be completely fascinated by his character.
And, if nothing else, he is what makes The Hitcher what it is: A film that should be little more than a second-rate throwaway, but manages to take advantage of (some of) its flaws to be an engaging little thriller with a great setting, and a film that contains one of the most relentless villains in movie history.
RECAP: Its premise is entirely stupid, and it only gets more and more unconvincing as it goes on, but The Hitcher still manages to be an effective little thriller, thanks in large part to Rutger Hauer’s epic performance as the titular character. Once he starts disappearing for large stretches, which seems to happen quite a bit during the film’s second half, it slowly starts loosening the intense grip it has on the viewer, as it gives in to genre formulas; even the required final showdown is rather droll. Yet the neverending desert setting, along with an impossibly-omnipresent killer give it an almost surrealistic quality that only heightens the feeling of dread. Almost required viewing for fans of the horror genre.
RATING: 7/10
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