Disturbing yet enthralling

Brilliant and touching

Awesome Movie

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I discovered this fantastic film more than thirty years ago. The first week of its release and I still feel astonished by this first viewing. It is one of the best film ever, all genres confounded. I did not consider the Rutger Hauer's character as the devil side of the hero, but only as a mad man who desired to be stopped in his bloody odyssey. he used the young man to kill him. That seems so obvious to me. And this is also the second film starring Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh after the tremendous FLESH AND BLOOD, a couple of years earlier.

Rutger Hauer is very good in the character which seems to be be lifted from his role as Roy in Blade Runner. My beef is that the movie doesn't answer the question Jim ask John two or more times. Why me? All he responds is "I think you know" with a knowing look. Yes, And... This was good as a white knuckle nihilistic thriller. But, if you open the door to it being a psychological one too, it seems rather hollow in the end. All guts, and no gloryhole. This Review is suppose to be longer, so here's some gibberish. The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. Mares eat oat and does eat oats. A lamb will eat ivy, if you let him. Yesterday, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. How I wish he'd go away.

This movie... It had a sort of legendary, mystical quality before I watched it. Heard it was pretty good many years ago, always liked Haur a lot, had bits of the trailer imprinted in my memory from 30 years ago, but just never got to see it. So glad I watched it today of all days... it was just one of those days (my normally sweet fat lazy cat bit my 6 year old daughter and drew a tiny bit of blood because she disturbed him by trying to put a blanket on him to keep him warm... Stupid flipping cat... Water spray bottle x 100 revenge/punishment) and now I can sleep better having purged some aggravation from my heart. More from the movie than the water bottle (all he had to do was stay in the kitchen instead of coming near me to beg for a fourth meal after attacking my kid). To the review, I just loved it. Rutger gave his best performance I think. The word menacing doesn't do it justice. I won't spoil it, but do this if you can. Avoid plot summaries, reviews, or spoilers of any kind. When you watch the movie, try to figure it out. Ask yourself what is happening for certain and what parts are a hallucination or the supernatural. I think this movie has several layers to it that come together nicely if you pay close attention to detail. Great performances all around truth be told... A few people launched careers off this movie if I am not mistaken.

I feel like Robert Harmon's The Hitcher is a misunderstood, under appreciated film. A lot of folks see it as either a crass piece of exploitation, or a run of the mill slasher film, a by the numbers product of its decade without distinction or class. They couldn't be more wrong. Yes it's a horror film. Yes it is brutal, sadistic and unflinching with its jarring violence. But it's crafted with such an ambient, graceful beauty and paced aesthetic that makes it truly stand out. It preys on our ancestral, archetypal fears of the unknown, the unnameable, and the desolate grey undefined ares in our world where sparse life thrives, the perfect breeding ground for an evil force to stalk people. In this case the evil takes the former of a mysterious, murderous hitchhiker played magnificently by Rutger Hauer. This is one of two towering, biblically epic performances that made his career (the other being Blade Runner), and he is a seething diabolical wonder in the role. He plays him initially as an endearing, quiet gentleman who quickly morphs into a deranged, blue eyed angel of death, stalking a terrified young man (C. Thomas Howell) across the dusty back roads of the southwest. The film walks a perfect line between chaotic blood and metal vehicular violence, tense, intimately frightening conversations and moody, dreamy interludes of eerie Vistas set to a haunting score by Mark Isham. Jennifer Jason Leigh has an a adorable extended cameo as a poor waitress inadvertently caught up in the mayhem. Written by Eric Red (Near Dark) who has a flair for brutal scenes, the film flies wild with a gut punch gritty bunch of kills and shocking stuff, which run parallel to the ponderous and atmospheric ambiance which is counter intuitive to the way most horror films of this type operate, but works just amazingly here, creating a dread soaked, lonely, inexorably doom laden horror masterpiece that stays in your dreams long after you see it, especially popping up in your mind on random road trips to desolate areas;)