When young Jim Halsey stops to pick up a muderous hitchhiker, he opens the door to terrible evil. He is subsequently stalked, framed for the hitcher's crimes, and has his life made into hell by the same man he rejected.
Mr. Hauer, who has reportedly vowed not to play any more villains or crackpots, is probably making the right decision, if this is any measure of the sort of role that comes his way.
FulvueDrive-in.com
October 10, 2005
Rutger Hauer is so menacing as the title fiend that you'll never pick up a hitchhiker. An absolutely relentless horror-thriller.
I would have admired it more if it had found the courage to acknowledge the real relationship it was portraying between Howell and Rutger, but no: It prefers to disguise itself as a violent thriller, and on that level it is reprehensible.
Feature debuts don't come much better than director Robert Harmon and screenwriter Eric Red's sleek, dream-like thriller about a naïve college boy who crosses paths with devil in the flesh after taking a wrong turn on some lost highway.
