Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

THE HITCHER was a good thriller of the 1980s that's been well remembered by a lot of fans, not least thanks to Rutger Hauer giving one of his best performances as the ice-cold, stop-at-nothing serial killer. In more recent years, Hollywood has tried, unsuccessfully, to have another slice of the cake, first by releasing this straight-to-video sequel and then by releasing a bigger budgeted remake with Sean Bean in the Hauer role. I've seen the latter, and it's nothing special, so this undistinguished sequel was the last of the 'hitcher' films (not counting the countless rip-offs) that I had to see. I wasn't missing much.The most interesting thing about the film is that C. Thomas Howell reprises his role from the first film. I didn't like him much in THE HITCHER, but he's grown up a lot since then and I actually found that he gave a pretty good performance. For me, he was the most interesting person on screen. He provides a nice, fitting link between the first and the second films, and as the sole returning actor, a lot rests on his shoulders, but he doesn't let that stop him.The worst thing about this sequel, though, is the story, which is just a blatant copy of the first film's plot. A hitcher is picked up and then dropped off after being revealed to be a psychopath. There's shtick with severed fingers, roadside cafes, and somebody who gets tied up between a truck cab and its stationary load. Once again, the intrepid sheriff department don't believe a word of what's going on, so it's up to our youthful hero to stop the hitcher in his tracks. Yep, we've seen it all before and done better, so aside from the plane vs. truck climax (which I liked, and which is something new), don't go expecting originality here.This time around the hitcher himself is played by regular bad guy for hire Jake Busey, son of Gary. Jake's been burning up the screen in the likes of ROAD HOUSE 2 and IDENTITY, so he seems an obvious choice for the part. He doesn't come close to Hauer's performance, though, or even Bean's for that matter. Busey's encouraged to go way over the top at all times, with plenty of wisecracks and humour along the way. I appreciate the vitality he brings to the film, and I do like him as an actor, but he just doesn't sit right here. Better is Kari Wuhrer, as the attractive heroine forced to go up against the maniac. Many women in modern horror films are pretty, young and poor actresses to boot, but not so Wuhrer. She really delivers her part and it was a delight to have her on screen.Anyway, things play out as you'd imagine, and there's nothing in the way of shocks or indeed surprises (although the film does open with a most effective twist). Saying that, the desert locations are well used and the action has a certain slickness about it that makes it appealing, so I can't say I didn't enjoy this one; for a straight-to-video sequel made almost twenty years after the original, I think it does okay.

Unwarranted film is another reason sequels suck. What's worse is our leading man Howell dies in the middle, where sexy Wuhner is left to carry the movie off, no easy task given the material she has to work with. After Howell dies, while protecting girlfriend Wuhner, the movie sours. The story's just the same. A double whammy for Howell's character who made the mistake of picking up Hauer in the first. The movie's set fifteen years later. Howell mentions at the start that he's a cop to a little a boy, (this sounds so phoney and overdone) giving him reassurance, after saving him from a kidnapping, where at first Howell getting sloshed in the rain, has a dark look, you actually think he's the bad guy. His girlfriend owns an aerial spraying business, with Howell flying the planes. That terrible incident, who he's never mentioned to his girl, is still eating him up inside, and this has been affecting his police work. At the advice of old Captain Esteridge, after Howell seeks help from him, again overacted, thus not believable, him and Wuhner return to the territory where it happened to finally face his demons. They travel in one of their planes, commuting to a pick up spot to obtain a waiting car. There's a real nasty dust storm ahead. To Howell's disapproval, another standing figure, thumbing it, is picked by Wuhner, so you know what follows, madness, and mayhem, plus some real grisly violence if in respect to the violence in the original. As with so many unnecessary remakes of late, and some of it's sequels, this is a teaching tool to why films should stop at the original, or in the minority case where the sequels are good, they should draw the line at number two. The wacko they pick up is Busey, another one that overacts some, but it's relevant to his nutball character, that he puts energy and vim into it, giving a half creepy performance, but he's no Rutger. He does tend to get bloody annoying, but I'm glad he did this. Again what dampened this movie, and made me a dark sight angry, as being an avid fan of the first, was Howell's departure. He way overacts, another example having him, threatening Busey to get out of his vehicle, where he then tells Howell to seek psychiatric help. Even his girl, doesn't believe this hitchhiker's a psycho, where he's reliving this hell all over again, his death, may'be a better option to rid himself of this mental burden he's got. Howell too, seems to be playing a different character. Busey's such an over the top psycho, he even chops his finger off, putting the blame on Wuhner, that again has the cops thinking she's the baddie, filling Howell's shoes as it were in the original. Like the arid surrounds, this is what the film becomes. It's climax of Busey being pulled apart while strapped to a tanker is even foiled. Awful, hey. But so is the movie.

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

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)