Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
While driving through the New Mexico Desert during a rainy night, college students Jim Halsey and his girlfriend Grace Andrews give a ride to a hitchhiker. While in their car, the stranger proves to be a psychopath threatening the young couple with a knife, but Jim successfully throws him out of the car. This sets off a chain of events that will change all of their lives forever.
A by-the-numbers remake of the 1986 cult thriller, The Hitcher (2007) brings little new to the table. The plot is a straightforward retread of the original, swapping the lone male protagonist for a college couple but otherwise recycling the same cat-and-mouse highway horror beats. Acting is unremarkable, with the leads delivering generic performances and Sean Bean's menacing hitchhiker coming across as hollow compared to Rutger Hauer's iconic original turn. Cinematography is the one bright spot — the New Mexico desert landscapes are captured with some visual competence, giving the film a sleek if sterile look. Novelty is essentially nonexistent, as this is a formulaic, derivative remake that adds nothing conceptually or stylistically to the original. The ending is predictable and unsatisfying, failing to deliver meaningful closure or tension.