Format: Streaming video from HBO Go on rockin’ flatscreen.
There’s a reason that I rewatch movies I’ve seen before for this blog. That reason is that my opinion sometimes changes regarding a particular film. If you’d asked me a year ago what I thought of The Hitcher from 1986, I’d have told you it was a disturbing horror film that goes to some really dark places and does it really well. Seeing it again now, this is a film that retains none of the power that I would have attributed to it and is instead just a thinly connected series of sadistic events. I looked forward to revisiting The Hitcher and now I wonder exactly what I saw in it. Even the scene, the one that everyone remembers, comes across as just being mean-spirited and ugly.
Here’s how this works: Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is driving a car from Chicago to San Diego to deliver it to the man who bought it. One night, he almost falls asleep at the wheel. Worried that he might actually fall asleep, he picks up a hitchhiker named John Ryder (Rutger Hauer), hoping that conversation might keep him on his toes. Unfortunately for Jim, John Ryder is a psychopath who needed a ride because he brutally murdered the driver of the last car he was in, promising to do the same to Jim. When he sees an opportunity, Jim kicks Ryder out of his car and drives away.
