By Unnnnnnggggh. I thought I’d try to watch a Stephen King film I hadn’t seen before, and one of the choices on demand for me to pick from was this Riding the Bullet nonsense, which is a movie based on an e-Book King wrote in 2002. Again, King wrote the screenplay, and again, Mick Garris did the Directing.
The gist is that shortly after trying to commit suicide (but not succeeding, obviously) this college kid Alan Parker gets a phone call that his mother had a stroke, and decides to hitchhike to the hospital to see her. Of course all the people he gets rides with are total weirdos, but the last guy, George Staub (Hi, David Arquette! How’s that movie career going?), is actually dead. Or Death. Or something — and he tells Alan that he has to make a choice: either his mother dies, or Alan does. Along the way there are hallucinations and some flashbacks to The Bullet in Thrill Village, which is an amusement park ride Alan was too scared to ride as a kid. Ah, metaphors.
Anyway! The most exciting thing about this movie is … the trailer. And that’s it. Otherwise, it’s completely BORESVILLE all the way through. It’s not even bad enough to be good, or to watch with friends and make fun of. It just is.
Final recommendation: SKIP THIS ONE. It’s not worth 98 minutes of your time.
I Love Splatter! 