The Hitcher 2: I’ve Been Waiting (2003)

The original The Hitcher arrived in the mid-80s at a time when horror was searching for a new direction. The slasher cycle had largely run its course, zombie movies were yesterday’s news and possession films had begun to lose their grip. The latest craze was the “dream within a dream” reality-bending nightmare world introduced by Wes Craven in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Suddenly every second horror film seemed determined to blur the line between dreams and reality, stretching credibility to breaking point—even by horror standards.

Brainless thrills and chills of the most implausible kind!

The original The Hitcher arrived as a supernatural, bogeyman variation on Duel and quickly developed a substantial following on video. Stylishly directed, well acted and blessed with a memorably sinister performance by Rutger Hauer, it succeeded despite possessing a plot that was wafer-thin and almost entirely devoid of logic. It was a textbook example of style triumphing over substance, but the style was so effective that most audiences happily overlooked the absurdities.

Seventeen years later comes The Hitcher II, with C. Thomas Howell reprising his role as Jim Halsey, still haunted by his encounter with the ghostly hitchhiker and now a deeply traumatised police officer teetering dangerously close to the edge. In an early dramatic sequence Halsey’s increasingly trigger-happy behaviour finally convinces his superiors to relieve him of duty. His shapely girlfriend, played by Kari Wuhrer, persuades him to confront the demons of his past by returning to the lonely highways where the nightmare began.

Naturally, the fun starts almost immediately when Wuhrer insists on picking up another hitchhiker, this time in the shape of Jake Busey. The clock is turned back and another deadly game begins against a seemingly superhuman phantom psycho who is every bit as homicidal as Hauer’s original creation, though lacking much of his predecessor’s charisma, wit and eerie mystique.

Once Halsey is temporarily removed from the action, Wuhrer finds herself trapped in an increasingly desperate game of survival. Busey’s favourite pastime is slaughtering innocent bystanders before effortlessly framing Kari for every murder. Time and again she finds herself clutching a smoking gun in one hand, a blood-soaked knife in the other, surrounded by freshly murdered corpses while desperately protesting, “You’ve got to believe me—it wasn’t me!” It’s difficult not to admire the sheer efficiency of a killer capable of manipulating every crime scene with such miraculous precision.

The action comes thick and fast, slickly staged with enough gore and nastiness to satisfy even hardened horror fans. Visually the film is attractive, making excellent use of its sun-bleached photography and stylised colour filters, while Kari Wuhrer acquits herself well as the damsel in distress who gradually transforms into an action heroine. Jake Busey, however, never quite convinces as the new Hitcher. Where Rutger Hauer radiated quiet menace and unsettling intelligence, Busey resembles little more than an angry backwoods redneck with a homicidal streak.

The film’s greatest weakness, however, is its complete contempt for plausibility. If the original occasionally stretched credibility beyond breaking point, this sequel positively revels in its absurdity. Plot holes appear with astonishing regularity, enough to make even Swiss cheese seem positively airtight. The screenplay rapidly runs out of steam and eventually collapses under the weight of its own increasingly ludicrous contrivances.

There is plenty of action, enough violence to satisfy the gore brigade, and Kari Wuhrer is certainly easy on the eyes, but none of it adds up to very much. Like its predecessor, The Hitcher II only really functions if viewed as a surreal nightmare where conventional logic simply doesn’t apply. As a slice of glossy, brainless horror entertainment it passes the time pleasantly enough—but ultimately it remains an empty, implausible and rather pointless exercise in style over substance.