Sadly Over-hyped

An Exercise In Nonsense

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

I wasn't expecting much, but after introducing the lead character, setting up the storyline, it probably ain't the best idea to then go ahead and kill him off after 5 mins, now is it? NO IT'S NOT! They don't have a clue the hitcher is a dangerous psycho, even though when he first meets them he stares at them and says in a sleazy voice 'thanks, I've been waiting for you'! One small little problem that the producer of this movie seemed to have overlooked - how the heck is the hitcher supposed to be the same guy as 17 years ago, when he now looks about 20 years younger now?! The remainder of this lame movie i witnessed Busey Jr pull a few cheesy grins whilst basically killing the whole police force as they believe all his porkies and let him free every time. The chick in it almost deserves to be so easily unbelievably framed for all the murders because she does really dumb things like, when the psycho was frying up some breakfast he kills all the cops with the shotgun and then throws the gun to the girl and says catch, she catches, put her grubby prints ALL over it, then the police arrest her. Later on, she obviously hasn't learned from her mistakes when, psycho man kills some more cops, wipes his prints off, and throws the gun to her. What does she do? - immediately pick up the gun of course! who wouldn't? Naturally at the end of the movie she kills him, after flying a plane near him whilst he's driving a truck for about 4 hours, it still mystifies me what she was trying to do. She kills him by pointing a shotgun at him and staring at the gasoline truck behind him and then saying she doesn't want to get burnt (which i think, is a pretty clear signal what she is about to do) but he just slowly turns around then turns back wearing a confused expression upon his face. Dufus!This is OK if there is nothing else on. Can't beat the original, 2007 remake is lame as well!

the main problem i found with this movie is it is not original,whereas the first one was.there is lots of action and some excitement and a pretty high body count,but there is very little in the way of gore.in my mind ,most of the kills were lame.i like the fact that the heroine is a woman,and she a pretty strong character.the movie felt much liter in tone the the first one.it was sort of missing that scenes of foreboding.also,there are not any real scenes of peril or suspense.i do think the movie was entertaining,and the villain was not a bad character,although it would be hard to beat Rutger Hauer"s portrayal of the psycho in the fist movie.when all is said and done,i'd have to give "The Hitcher 2" 7/10

Remember The Hitcher? A violent, suspenseful cult flick starring Rutger Hauer? Well, it didn't need a sequel, did it? That's what any average moviegoer would say.Unfortunately, someone thought a second installment was necessary, hence this cheap rehash of the original, which sees Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) and his girlfriend threatened by a young, crazy hitchhiker (Jake Busey) who turns out to be (hold on) the reincarnation of John Ryder, the psycho Jim killed in the first film. So what's going to happen? The usual, I'd say: Ryder Jr. kills a lot of people, blames the protagonists, blah blah blah...This is the kind of sequel that has "cheap" written all over it, with its predictable screenplay, excessively familiar death scenes (some are copied shot by shot from the original) and embarrassingly dull acting: Howell has lost all the charm he had in 1986, his female co-star does nothing but scream, and Busey's attempt at channeling Rutger Hauer fails within 30 seconds from his first appearance. The whole reincarnation thing also robs the original film's climax of its strength: unlike Halloween killer Michael Myers, Ryder wasn't supposed to return.The good news is, no one seems to have made plans for a Hitcher III so far, thus leaving only this straight-to-video disaster as a sad footnote in the horror genre.

SPOILERS WITHIN! C. Thomas Howell returns as Jim Halsey, the kid from the first Hitcher who has now become a police officer due to the trauma experienced at the close of the last film. However due to psychological problems Howell is suspended and is convinced into coming to Texas where it all happened and having learned his lesson he refuses to pick up hitch-hikers but because he brought Kari Wuher with him, she makes him do so and it all happens again, except the action is with Kari Wuher. Let me explain that I heard that they are making a remake of The Hitcher with a woman in C.Thomas Howell's part. Now of course this is an extremely bad idea since well a woman being chased by a psychopath is so derivative it sucks away any tension from what could be done with such a premise. Back to Hitcher 2, by making the lead hero a woman it becomes derivative before it can even take off. Also one of the things completely lame is that as others have mentioned, Howell would have been a far more enjoyable actor to see play the Hitcher, after all Howell is older and looks far more worn than Jake Busey. Busey is too cartoonish and never for a microsecond institutes anything scary. Howell and Wuher do manage to give credible performances but mainly once Howell exits the picture (Because the movie kills him off!) the movie lacks any continuity it has with the original. Therefore this is a sequel that comes off more as a hack remake than it does a sequel. In fact it's all just so ghastly as the chase sequences recall the vast superiority of the first movie and worst of all, the movie is utterly boring. I'm giving it only a one star because it starts off reasonably watchable but after that it's just painful garbage to sit through.* out of 4-(Bad)