Editorials
‘The Hitcher’ Turns 35: Remembering Rutger Hauer’s Terrifying Performance
The feature debut of both screenwriter Eric Red (Bad Moon, Near Dark) and director Robert Harmon withstands time for many reasons. The road thriller offers exhilarating action sequences, an intense cat-and-mouse chase that spans the entire film, nasty deaths, and a unique relationship between the protagonist and antagonist. It’s the latter that transforms a well-executed thriller into something remarkable. Actor Rutger Hauer‘s career contained no shortage of defining roles, especially his more villainous turns. Hauer’s performance as icy cool John Ryder, the titular character, solidifies The Hitcher as an enduring genre highlight of the ’80s.
On a long road trip from Chicago to San Diego, young Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) struggles to stay awake during the dark, desolate stretch of desert highway in Texas. He turns the radio volume up high and lights a cigarette to ward off sleep, but the rain isn’t helping. So, Jim does what his mother warned against: he picks up a hitchhiker. The man, introducing himself as John Ryder, behaves oddly almost immediately. When Jim passes a stranded vehicle not much farther up the road, John presses his knee down on the accelerator to pass it. The danger escalates until Ryder issues a challenge, “I want you to stop me.” It marks the start of a deadly game between Jim and Ryder that will claim the lives of many before it’s through.
Before The Hitcher, Hauer already had several iconic performances under his belt. His portrayal of replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner marked an all-time career-high, but he also turned out equally commanding villains in Flesh+Blood and Nighthawks. He’d openly stated he wanted to move on from villainous parts in interviews, but Eric Red’s script drew him in instantly. That was fortuitous as Hauer was Harmon’s first choice to play John Ryder.
John Ryder remains an enigma throughout. His identity and backstory never come into play, and the lack of identification makes it all the easier for Ryder to pin the bodies piling up alongside the stretch of road on Jim. The elusiveness of Ryder is instantly intriguing, giving the character an almost supernatural feel as he takes far more damage than a human can usually withstand. The lack of character reveals also makes Ryder far more frightening as a psychopath gleefully killing without any apparent reason or motive.
Hauer elevates the already excellent material with a calculated and level-headed approach. Lines like, “Because I cut off his legs. And his arms. And his head. And I’m going to do the same to you,” become downright chilling with Hauer’s icy delivery. With a straight face and a bemused look in his eye, Ryder takes great pleasure in his sadism. This maniac enjoys inflicting psychological torture, perhaps more than homicide itself.
The evolution in the relationship between killer and target adds a unique layer to this propulsive thriller. It begins with a promise of violence. With every subsequent encounter, Ryder instead seems to be more interested in shaping Jim into a like-minded killer. In the film’s most infamous scene, Ryder finds Jim’s hotel room and kidnaps Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Ryder strings her up between two trucks then climbs into the cab. Knowing they can’t take out Ryder without killing Nash in the process, the police send in Jim, hoping he can talk Ryder down. Instead, Ryder hands Jim a revolver and tells him to shoot. When Jim refuses, a disappointed Ryder ends Nash’s life. Ryder offers up his own life freely, hoping to push Jim into committing murder. Poor Nash would be dead regardless of which choice Jim makes, so this grisly scene is more about the battle for Jim’s soul.
It works. While Jim relents in this choice, it marks the shift that heralds in the climax with Jim now chasing down Ryder. Jim runs Ryder off the road and finishes him with a shotgun blast. The Hitcher ends as it begins with Jim striking up a match to smoke, alone on an empty stretch of Texas desert. But Jim isn’t the same person that he was in the opening; he’s been battered, psychologically scarred, and manipulated by a ruthless killer who has successfully left an indelible mark in his psyche.
The psychological back and forth between Jim and Ryder, acted to perfection by Howell and Hauer, sets this road thriller apart. Ryder is a terrifying and ruthless killer, but the truth is that Harmon leaves most of the deaths to the viewer’s imagination. It’s Hauer who sells it. The Hitcher was released thirty-five years ago on February 21, 1986, and with it came one of horror’s most unforgettable villains of all time.
“Elevated Horror.” Of all the combinations in the English language, that one is the most insufferable.
It represents almost a decade of scary movies that, for the most part, took themselves too seriously. Horror responds to the moment, so its “why so serious” lean makes sense as we scuttle through the “worst of times” equation of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines. But there’s still an opening and a need for a lighter approach; one that not only has fun with its audience but takes the piss out of a genre that is seemingly letting its newfound “respectability” go to its head.
Wes Craven believed devotees see horror films to let out their fears one primal scream at a time. At their core, these movies are roller coasters; they bring us as close to the edge as possible before pulling us back into a safety net of reality. The need for a bigger and badder coaster increases during times when the size of that net decreases.
There’s a thrill that comes from imagining being in a foot race with a madman, or outthinking the hordes of zombies on the other side of the door, plus the scavenger humans coming behind them. There’s even a rush that comes from imagining how one might deal with possession to see good triumph over evil in the end. It’s all about building tension and releasing it through catharsis. That cathartic release usually sounds like screams followed by laughter, which signals relief. Genre heavy hitters over the past 10 years offered very little of that respite when the credits rolled. Films like Hereditary, The Witch, Talk to Me, and even Smile (pick one) keep that tension going after the screen fades to black.
Hereditary
As the genre became obsessed with creating trauma metaphors, that lack of release made sense. Anyone with even a small sample size of traumatic experiences knows those emotions don’t magically resolve themselves in an allotted run time. But how much trauma can one take? Especially when there’s a mess going on outside that few of us can escape from. Movies offer that off-ramp, no matter how short.
Everything can’t be, nor should it be, “elevated.” Audiences need thoughtful explorations of life’s ills via monsters as much as they need murdering masked maniacs with kitchen knives. And no, it doesn’t have to go any deeper than that. Sometimes, a knife is just a knife, and it’s still worth our time and respect. As weird as it sounds, that simplicity is comforting not in spite of the trauma but because of it.
The worst of times should manifest more than just anguish. People need to laugh just as much as they need to think seriously about this moment in time. Even the Scream franchise forgot the meta rock upon which it built its church when the latest foray sacrificed the subtle comedy for serious drama. Scary Movie returned at the perfect moment. It provides the necessary laughs, but it’s not a cure-all.
This isn’t a call for Scary Movie imitators but a return to a mainstream landscape where Killer Klowns from Outer Space sat with The Serpent and the Rainbow, nestled neatly with the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, which took nothing away from The Vanishing.
They Live
Even They Live, John Carpenter’s horror sci-fi satire sandwich, kept its tongue firmly in cheek while discussing serious ideas still relevant in 2026. Yes, a film about aliens taking over the world through subliminal messaging only visible through coded sunglasses is, in fact, a tad silly. Carpenter understood that mainstream horror can’t become so self-important that it never looks itself in the mirror and laughs at that inherent silliness.
The thing is, horror historically excels at poking fun at itself. Most of the Scream franchise, The Cabin in the Woods, or The Blackening show adoration without kowtowing. They recognize tropes and trappings but invert them for an audience already in on the joke, but one that also finds solace in said conventions. This keeps the genre on its toes; once something gets parodied, it’s usually time to evolve. That breeds new ideas and fresh filmmakers, which not only strengthen the genre’s collective voice but also amplify it.
Get Out, as “elevated” as some critics want us to believe it is, is a cathartic, populist scary movie that spoke to an untapped audience rather than speaking down to them. Backrooms is one of the biggest horror hits in years, partially because it’s fine-tuned for modern-day teenagers instead of their parents. Movies like these tell everyone the genre is open for business; open for innovation and, yeah, open for new ways in which people can lovingly poke fun at with a wink and a nudge.
Horror needs dread as much as it needs laughter.
Catharsis is just as important as tension, and pulpy populism has the same merit as more high-brow material. Respectability shouldn’t come at the expense of an experience akin to walking through a haunted house. At a time when joy seems in short supply, horror should look to its past to map out its future, and make things just a tad brighter for audiences.
Backrooms
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