This was a very odd viewing experience – I remembered this being talked about quite a while ago but I didn’t actually realise they’d ultimately made and released it, lol. I loved the first Hitcher movie, the whole storyline is one of those magical basic few like conmen and heist movies that works (just about) every time – see The Vanishing, Breakdown, Duel. As such, the only downfall of this production is really that it seems too familiar, to the point where I actually had to check back over my reviews and see if I hadn’t actually already seen it and forgotten about it (if I’m honest, after a particularly vague weekend, the jury’s still out on that one lol).

Anyway, like I say, there’s not much that can truly be done to break these stories beyond redemption and for me this hit the beats perfectly. Sean Bean is a perfectly fine substitution for Rutger Hauer, the kids in the car are a comfortable step below the glossy teens that usually populate these remakes; even the guy who plays the sheriff, a character who even in the original I seem to recall struck me as particularly creepy in his outright level-headedness lol, though his performance is annoying as hell it somehow works anyway. The “moment” at the end – it would be the hugest spoiler if I even hinted at it especially if you’ve not seen the original – it still made me nearly fall out of my chair and make an embarrassingly audible gasp (in fact, gasp is the wrong word, it was more like a combination of, “Jesus Christ!”, “No!” and gugggghhhhhh lol). Really, I don’t understand any review of this movie that doesn’t at least give it props for going all the way, just like the Texas Chainsaw remake that Michael Bay also had a hand in bringing to the screen, it’s frankly eons above the likes of Prom Night and April Fool’s Day, for god’s sake. I’m giving it an extra heart just for the sake of balance here, lol.

Yikes. I thought this would turn out to be the best of the three movies I watched last night, I love Rebecca Miller’s Angela which I mentioned in the Ripe review, I must watch that again and review it some time – but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I normally love this kind of thing – Nine Lives springs to mind, obviously Short Cuts ... I love strong independent female characters like this, and I love all three of the actresses playing the parts. Even the Little Children style voiceover didn’t bug me so much at the start, in retrospect because I figured it was going to be a Little Children style voiceover.

Well, let’s focus on the voiceover. It basically ruins the movie and is best summarised by one of the lines in it at the end following Fairuza Balk’s character spotting cuts and bruises on the arm of a hitchhiker she picked up – “She saw the edge of a wound, bruises …” he says … yes, thank you, we just saw that. It just bugged the hell out of me all the way and that was the last straw. I’ve read a couple of reviews, including Roger Ebert’s, that singles out the Balk story as the most engaging, and it’s true, but honestly even there I just wasn’t grabbed by this movie at all as much as I expected to be. The subtitle reads “Three Portraits” and I’d honestly rather see three beautiful photographs of the actresses – or even blown up stills from the movie, they all certainly have their standalone moments – hanging on the wall of an art gallery. The 90 minute blessing really doesn’t apply here, I’m afraid.