|
In the mid-1990s, Robert Harmon visited David Fincher on the set of The Game. “I’m a huge David Fincher fan,” Harmon tells me. “Seven, to me, is one of the great movies of all time — it’s just crazy-good, first to last.” But when the two directors met, Harmon discovered that the younger filmmaker was just as big a fan of his. “He said, ‘Your movie changed my life.’ It meant a lot to me, especially from somebody you admire so much.”
For more than 35 years now, Harmon has been pleasantly surprised whenever he learns that someone loves his first feature, The Hitcher, a nasty little horror movie with Hitchcockian vibes that terrorized viewers. The funny thing is that Harmon doesn’t consider himself to be a big horror guy — and, as he confides, “I don’t want to be controversial, but I was never even that much of a Hitchcock fan. His reputation just seemed way greater than his movies seemed to suggest it should be. I know it’s a minority opinion.”
And yet, this elemental story about a young man who foolishly picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere, realizing too late that he’s made a terrible mistake, remains a primal cautionary tale — a worst-case scenario of what your mom always warned you about in regards to talking to strangers. But few strangers are as unnerving as John Ryder, the enigmatic loner who torments feckless young Jim Halsey. The film’s power goes beyond its killer hook, however, touching on something bizarre and unspoken between hunter and hunted. At its core, The Hitcher is a film about a codependent relationship, maybe even a twisted love story. It’s about finding something you weren’t expecting out there on the highway, something that’s been waiting for you all along.
|
