THE HITCHER (2007) is a Platinum Dunes remake I had no interest in at the time. Robert Harmon’s 1986 cult classic obviously didn’t require a remake, and I didn’t trust those guys to do one. Also almost everybody said it was terrible. I do know of an exception – Jordan Crucchiola and Sam Wineman used to rave about it on their podcast Aughtsterion, and they got it to #1 on the “’00 Slashers” episode of Screen Drafts. They’re younger and much more attached to that era of horror than me, but their enthusiasm made me curious.

And I think they’re right! There’s a good chance I wouldn’t have liked it back then, when I had a grudge against Michael Bay productions and the original was more fresh on my mind. It’s certainly not a replacement, and some of it might’ve been lessened if I remembered the original better. But viewed on its own, as 2007 studio horror, it’s pretty impressive – a vicious 84 minute head on collision of a movie.

If anything it’s too faithful to the original – Eric Red even gets a co-writing credit (for his original screenplay, I would guess) along with Eric Bernt (SURVIVING THE GAME, VIRTUOSITY, ROMEO MUST DIE, HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME) and Jake Wade Wall (WHEN A STRANGER CALLS remake, JACOB’S LADDER remake, AMUSEMENT, CABIN FEVER 3). The most significant change is that instead of following a lone man who later befriends a waitress, this is about a couple who are together from the beginning. Jim (Zachary Knighton, CHERRY FALLS, THE PALE DOOR) and Grace (Sophia Bush, SUPERCROSS) are college students headed to meet Grace’s friends in Lake Havasu for spring break.

That’s pretty Michael Bay/Platinum Dunes, actually, as are Jim’s muscle car, his ’70s-ish hair (he looks like Shaggy from Scooby-doo, actually), some of the needle drops, and especially that Grace wears a Michael Bay hot girl uniform (camisole, denim skirt, boots), forced into a specific genre of hotness that I think makes it harder to take the character seriously, but that’s how they did these.

The most Platinum Dunes touch I guess is that it captures sunlight in that beautiful advertising sort of way; cinematographer James Hawkinson came from music videos. Sometimes the digital coloring makes it look sunny and dark at the same time. Of course there are good looking movies now, but I think we took for granted how much care they put into it back then.

I wondered in my review of the original if the remake would have to be a period piece, since hitchhiking isn’t really a thing anymore. No, they just make him not exactly a hitcher. The man never lifts a thumb. Just over five minutes into the movie, the opening credits All American Rejects song still playing on the radio, Jim swerves and does a 360 because a man is just standing in the middle of the road during a storm, next to his broken down car. Jim wants to see if he’s okay but Grace is scared, so they drive off. Later they run into the guy at a convenience store, he can’t get a tow today, so Jim is guilted into giving him a ride to a hotel.

I was impressed how quickly it gets right to it. The passenger (Sean Bean, RONIN) introduces himself as John Ryder, sits in the front seat while Grace is in the back with earbuds in, does not waste much time pretending to be normal. He’s only in the car for about a minute before he looks her up and down, says “She’s a good lookin girl,” Jim not knowing what to say besides a timid “Thank you” before the guy asks “How long you been fucking her?”

I mean, how do you continue from there? Jim tries “How long you been fucking your wife?,” noting his wedding ring, but the guy says he just wears it because it makes him seem more trustworthy to strangers, then he produces his switchblade. We’re off to the races already and I didn’t even know there were any scheduled for today.

So this is a chase movie and an ongoing battle. As in the original they manage to throw him out of the car (a team effort this time) but then are horrified to see him having been picked up by a family, sitting in the back with the kids. Though they later fight about the initial act of giving the guy a ride (Grace says, “You could’ve listen to me,” and Jim ultimately apologizes) it’s nice that in general they feel a responsibility to try to help other people they see in danger. It’s an appropriate movie for that Bush era, and for the even more insane one we’re in now, because it’s just a couple of innocent people trying to make it through a relentless barrage of savagery. Just some young doofuses, this guy is practically The Terminator, he took their phone, nobody believes them, the cops won’t help them, in fact very much the opposite.

The part I remembered most from the original is when he gets arrested in connection with the killings but suddenly finds his cell open and everyone in the station dead. It’s a crazy, almost supernatural feeling scene, later evoked in the opening of FURIOUS SEVEN when Jason Statham murders everyone in the hospital. I haven’t seen the sequel to THE HITCHER but I doubt John Ryder becomes a good guy or gets a buddy movie spin-off with The Rock.

The remake redoes that scene and at the time I’m sure I would’ve thought it was idiotic that they put the holding cell in a dank, dungeon-like basement like this is still the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake, but these days though I can appreciate it. This department is not portrayed as a group of professionals, but as crazed rednecks who assume, based on no evidence, that this couple are murderers, and they’re sure to rough them up and talk shit to them even though they’re totally innocent people who are themselves victims and risked their lives to save others. This is almost a documentary.

Neal McDonough (ONE TOUGH BASTARD, I KNOW WHO KILLED ME) later shows up as Lieutenant Esteridge, a cop who’s smart enough to look at the crime scene here and figure out that who they say did it couldn’t have done it. But even he, when he hears an incorrect report over the radio that Grace shot a cop, goes back to believing they’re guilty. Also he has some ridiculous dialogue like “I don’t give a rat’s cock bag what they did” and “Sonofabitch! You gotta be five-finger-fuckin me!” But he does get to somewhat redeem himself.

Grace takes a gun from a dead cop and later Jim says “Give me the gun.” She gives it to him but she says “What!?” – an acknowledgment that, what the fuck, just because he’s the man he has appointed himself in charge? There’s an undercurrent of critique there that I think feels more true than if they just went full girl power and had her turn into Sarah Connor or whatever.

She’s more of a final girl – she’s not a warrior but she she doesn’t give up. There’s a very upsetting part where she finds Ryder in her bed, and the sloppy way she fights him off and scrambles into the bathroom just looks so real, not like a stunt.

There’s a particular choice that went pretty far in selling me on this movie, but I have to admit that I hadn’t seen the original in long enough time that I forgot a version of it already happened in that one. VERY LARGE SPOILER FOR BOTH VERSIONS. Near the climax of the movie Ryder has tied up Jim and is threatening to use a big rig to draw and quarter him. They’re surrounded by police, Grace has a gun to Ryder’s head, but how will she stop him? She doesn’t – he hits the gas and Jim gets ripped right in half! I guess I would’ve been less shocked if I’d remembered that happened to Jennifer Jason Leigh in the original. But in a way this seems more unlikely because he’s the lead of the movie, introduced even before Grace. But now she’s in charge.

The score is by regular Bay collaborator Steve Jablonsky. During a big car stunt scene I thought he was dropping a surprisingly good electro beat and then I thought “wait a minute” as I realized it was just playing Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” as cars were crashing and flipping in slow motion. I don’t know what they were thinking there, it’s a very strange choice for one of the biggest spectacle moments. I guess the hitcher wants to fuck their car like an animal? Anyway, give my respects to stunt coordinator Kurt Bryant (SCANNER COP II, JACK FROST, THE PURGE, THE NEON DEMON).

There are a couple other bits of stylistic flare that come off goofy – like a cgi rabbit that gets run over right at the beginning, and a cgi dragonfly that hits their windshield. If you are computer animated in this movie you are fucked. But mostly I think this is a well put together movie by director Dave Meyers. Like many of the Platinum Dunes directors he comes from commercials and music videos – a bunch of Kid Rock and Creed and Dave Matthews Band and Korn, but at least he did “B.O.B.” and “So Fresh, So Clean” for Outkast. This is actually not his feature debut, because he had done the Master P/Eddie Griffin movie FOOLISH (1999). All he’s done since is the Adam Sandler basketball drama HUSTLE and the Jennifer Lopez visual album thing THIS IS ME… NOW: A LOVE STORY (2024). 

Coming from me it’s not much to say THE HITCHER is the best of the Platinum Dunes remakes, but here’s what I think is better about it: it’s mean and bleak like the Marcus Nispel joints but it has just enough humanity that it doesn’t feel like the proverbial Marilyn Manson going door to door trying to shock people. Jim and Grace get mad at each other but they try to work things out. It’s very serious but there are moments of levity where they get to laugh with each other. There’s a weird bit where the redneck convenience clerk (Kyle Davis, later in the FRIDAY THE 13TH remake) starts talking to Jim about cars and then weirdly changes the topic to his donkeys. In another part the guards transporting Ryder are having a conversation about “customized teddy bears.” Nice touches of personality in what could be a bland programmer.

Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS is seen on a TV in a scene, which may have been a reference to the fact that Platinum Dunes were developing it for a remake (I’m not sure the timeline there). I was very against them doing that, and glad they gave up, because I assumed they would’ve given an explanation for the birds going crazy, even though not understanding it is exactly what’s scary about it.

That’s what they did with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, after all. They gave Leatherface a backstory where he was deformed and got picked on. To their credit, though, they clearly understood that THE HITCHER is scary because of how inexplicable he is. I mean, why the fuck is he doing this? They actually lay it on pretty thick about how much it unnerves everybody that they don’t understand this guy. You know, come to think of it he’s kind of like Anton Chighur in that way. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN came out later the same year and went on to win best picture, coasting off of that THE HITCHER remake momentum.

This is definitely a very good use of Bean. He can play nice guys, but take away any traces of warmth or kindness, give him a cool jacket, make him stare at people, he can make your blood run cold before splattering it on the hot pavement. Even when the system is finally ready to help, when they have him in custody and he even seems a little scared, you’re not really safe from him.

Well, Grace will figure something out. That’s the release and the optimism of this genre. I don’t think we’re gonna make it to Lake Havasu, though.

p.s. Now that I look at it 2007 was a pretty rippin year for horror. We also had 28 WEEKS LATER, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, 1408, DEAD SILENCE, FRONTIER(S), GRINDHOUSE, HALLOWEEN, HOSTEL: PART II, INSIDE, THE MIST, MOTHER OF TEARS, MURDER PARTY, THE ORPHANAGE, P2, ROGUE, STORM WARNING, and WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END. I liked many of those better than this, but it wouldn’t seem out of place on that list.