When about to head to a concert with two of his friends, Alan Parker receives a phone call and finds out that his mom is in the hospital due to having a stroke. So Alan skips the concert, after all his mother comes first, and hitchhikes to get to his old hometown where his mother is. But the way there proves to be nothing but easy as he meets weirdos and starts having visions of different kinds. Eventually he is picked up by a stranger who proves to have returned from the other side to give him a choise. A choise between life and death.
When I was young, well not that I'm old now, but when I was much younger, I was somewhat of a Stephen King fan. Actually 'fan' might be a too strong word to describe it, but let's just say that I was a bit into King's stuff. I read most of his books, and watched most of the movies based on the man's books, short stories and novels. Then when I got a bit older and came to my senses, I realized that his stuff was never that great, with a few exceptions like Pet Sematary and Graveyard Shift among a few others. But I think that a lot of his old stuff is still pretty good, at least it had something to it compared to the things he has come up with in recent years which have just been a total waste of time. And speaking of a total waste of time, Riding the Bullet is exactly that.
This is not Mick Garris first take on turning Stephen King's writings into something for the screen, but I've never been really impressed with any of Garris adaptations. One thing that the man has done though which really stood out, was to come up with the Masters of Horror series, that was truly brilliant, other than that, nothing really. Riding the Bullet is no exception, it actually plain sucks, and I couldn't wait for it to be over. I haven't read the book, and now I'm so not going to either since the story pretty much blew and was everything that's opposite to interesting. If having a bad story wasn't bad enough, add to that some totally uninteresting characters, pathetic scares and basically, just a whole bunch of complete garbage.
We get to follow Alan who's into some dark stuff, and already then and there, things took a pathetic turn. He soon finds out that his mom is at the hospital in Maine because of a stroke that she had. So Alan heads towards Maine, and to get there, he decides to hitchhike which wasn't such a great plan. On the way he meets some strange fellows, some that's out to hurt him and on-top of that, he starts having more and more visions of terrible things. Well, these things are supposed to be terrible, but they are actually just so bad it's terrible if you know what I mean.
After a while, David Arquette comes along and delivers a terrible performance (again with the terrible), playing some dead guy who's so freakin bad I felt ashamed when I saw it. He gives Alan a choise whether he wants to live which means that his mother would die, or the opposite. Btw, the title, Riding the Bullet, suggest that this Bullet is a roller-coaster that Alan was afraid to go on when he was a kid. Boohoo, who cares... At times it's supposed to be scary but it fails miserably at being anything but scary. Other than that, the story was a mess, and it was just a real drag sitting through the whole thing. Maybe the book is ok, but for a horror movie, it didn't work at all and I feel sick now.
It looked all right, but that was the only thing it had going for it really. Basically it was just a big mess that featured some crappy and unbelivable acting, some extremely lame scares and a whole heap of other things considered bad. Do yourself a favor and stay far away from it as it's just not worth the time.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2004
DIRECTOR: Mick Garris
WRITING CREDITS: Stephen King, Mick Garris
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Jonathan Jackson, David Arquette, Barbara Hershey
COUNTRY: USA, Germany, Canada
RUNTIME: 98 min
RATING: 2/10
Riding the Bullet Website/IMDB Click here
Riding the Bullet Trailer Click here
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