The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting (2003)

OK. I must preface by saying that I've had the pleasure of seeing THE HITCHER with the quietly menacing Rutger Hauer and the very thought of that film still sends chills down my spine. What ...drive alone on a fairly remote stretch of road where the only thing you're liable to run into are hungry buzzards? Sure! Why not? And while we're at it let's stop and pick up a psychopathic serial killer who just happens to be Rutger Hauer! What the hell! It's not as though you've just lowered your odds of surviving such an encounter ...right? OK..now let's make some lame substitutions for the killer and call him Jake Busey and while we're at let's throw in the pretty (but vacuous) )Kari .Wuhrerand there you have it: voilà! The not so spectacular THE HITCHER 2: I've Been Waiting! See how that works out? I myself have been waiting for a decent sequel and like so many others, I was lured in simply by seeing the name C. Thomas Howell attached to this movie so ...I'd thought I'd give it a shot. Silly me! Nothing in the way of chills here with Jake Busy flashing what I can only describe as a horsey grin and resembling his father more and more by the minute (OK...now I'm scared!).As for C.Thomas Howell his character was only there as a poorly written lead in( another much needed pay check for the financially beleaguered Howell, who at last check was being sued..blah blah blah). This movie is yet another reason why Hollywood should try coming up with something new instead of resting lazily on its laurels and yelling "sequel!sequel!". To try and retell or reinvent something as good as THE HITCHER is a downright travesty and an insult to the movie going public. I would strongly suggest that if you haven't seen the original with Rutger Hauer you should do so.

The Hitcher 2 is the sequel to the hit 1986 original 'The Hitcher' where a young man Jim (C. Thomas Howell) picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be psychotic. Part 2 is about the main character from the first (again played by Howell) going back to the same area where the events from the first took place in an attempt to move on from his trauma. He takes his girlfriend (Kari Wuhrer) with him on the trip where, once again, a hitchhiker they pick up turns out to be psychotic.When I picked this up, I was excited to see Howell reprise the role he had from the first. I was disappointed however when he was killed off in the first half hour. This movie is really about his girlfriend trying to fight off and kill the man (Jake Busey) who murdered Jim. Kari Wuhrer did a good job in the lead, but the character makes so many bad decisions throughout the movie all you can do is laugh at her.She picks up almost all of the weapons Busey uses to kill the cops and townsfolk which makes her the prime suspect. After a while, it got really tedious to watch her make the same mistakes over and over again. Yes, it happened in the original film, but it was really laughable in this one. Busey played a good "psycho", but wasn't as convincing as Rutger Hauer from the first.The ending leaves us hanging as we never really find out what his motive behind the killings are. Was he the son of the original Hitcher or was he a reincarnation of the first Hitcher? We never find out. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone except maybe horror completests. The first half is pretty good, but it falls apart from the middle right through to the end.4/10

Since I didn't like the original, I popped in the sequel with my typical optimism. See, whenever I happen to dislike a movie with a cult following, I go to the sequel and remake thinking "It'd be funny if I wound up liking the hated and evil sequel/remake more than the original." Why? Just because many people dislike sequels and remakes on principle alone. Well, as it turns out … I didn't like the sequel (or the remake) either.The Hitcher 2 is the cinematic equivalent to the equation (X * 0 = 0). Some ideas just don't lend themselves to sequels. The idea of a God-like Hitchhiker with the mystical power of popping up whenever and wherever the plot needs (sorry, *demands*) him to make the protagonist's life hell? Yeah, no matter how you cut that it's an obedient repeat of the first one. At best the sequel can bring superficial changes that, in the end, count for nothing. No matter what number X represents (X=5, X=50, X=500, X=50Bajillion), the equation always yields 0.In the first film the Hitcher needs to materialize in the backseat of a car belonging to a nice family; in the sequel, the Hitcher needs to appear at a farm belonging to a nice old couple. And so on, and so forth.Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) returns to the scene of the original crime to face his demons, and joining him this time is Maggie (Kari Wuhrer.) Jim's demons materialize in the form of the new Hitcher (Jake Busey who tries too hard to play a psychopath.) The Hitcher this time around is apparently a former master of ceremonies at a carnival freak show, or maybe even a Nickelodeon game show host on crack. I dunno. All I know is that Busey made me better understand the notion than an actor has to "become" the character because here he clearly just "plays" crazy in the most artificial sense.Like its predecessor, The Hitcher spends most of the film killing everyone around the protagonist, framing the protagonist, chasing the protagonist, and pushing her to the brink of sanity. The sequel continues the trend of good cinematography (even if it is overly stylized for the sake of over stylization). More than anything I wanted the nicely done effects and neat scenarios to thrill me … but I couldn't believe in them enough for that to happen.No fan of the thrillers watches them to disbelieve. I don't watch Indiana Jones, Die Hard, and the Alien films (among many others) for absolute logic. Hell, I liked Torque, Half Past Dead, and most of Michael Bay's films. And I was keenly aware of this when Maggie flies a plane around the Hitcher's massive 18-wheeler, and the soundtrack kicks into overdrive with intense chase music while the plane just circles and circles and circles. I thought, "Okay, what's the point?" Whooshing by the truck isn't going to do anything even if the music tries with all its might to convince me otherwise. This isn't an honest presentation – it's a cowardly act of trying to punch up tension that doesn't exist. It's the score that cried wolf.And since the movie indulged on a punched up and pointless (thus thrill-less) fly-by sequence, it gave my mind the opportunity to note the plane realistically couldn't threaten the truck without crashing (probability favoring Maggie dying before the Hitcher). Plus since the film wanted to cry wolf, I stopped listening entirely. So much for the film's climax.Thrillers can ride amazingly thin plots with amazingly thin characters and get away with it. A film has to literally split hairs to cut them too thin, and amazingly many do.

When I first saw "The Hitcher 2: I've been Waiting" on SciFi I found it to be extremely underrated. I thought it was pretty entertaining and I enjoyed very much.. It was thrilling, action packed, & dramatic all mixed together. The elements in it were extremely good to say the least. Although the story was relatively the same as the first one, yet it makes up for that with a few shocking moments which conclude with a big showdown at the end.Now to all who may be wondering if you should check it out well don't listen to all the negativity. I recommend you all give it a try and make your on decision. Either way I give The Hitcher 2: I've been Waiting ***1/2 stars out of five.