Review: Riding the Bullet
This long, slow ride finally revs up in the last lap.
Something went wrong with horror in 1980s, and I guess George Romero and John Carpenter are to blame. That’s not really a fair assessment: the fault lies not with the work of either director but with the bastard progeny it produced. Carpenter’s 1978 hit HALLOWEEN more or less created the teen-slasher genre, and Romero elevated on-screen splatter to incredible aesthetic heights in DAWN OF THE DEAD (1979). Things went horribly awry, however, when Sean Cunningham combined elements of both films to create FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980).
The box office success of that film established a trend whose effects linger to this day, proving a horror film lacking in conventional virtues (plot, suspense, characterization, performance) could still be a hit with teenage audiences if it included enough graphic jolts at regular intervals. This became the conventional wisdom that nearly destroyed the horror genre throughout the ‘80s and much of the ‘90s. Even after films like THE SIXTH SENSE and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT showed that other approaches could be even more successful, it’s still hard for American filmmakers to break out of the formula that requires doses of gratuitous violence at regular intervals. In a film that exists for no other reason than to showcase the special effects, this might be understandable (if not laudable); unfortunately, in a film like RIDING THE BULLET, it works outright harm.
The expressed intent of writer-director Mick Garris (adapting a thirty-page e-book by Stephen King) was to incorporate two familiar aspects of King’s work into one film: nostalgia and horror. This had the potential to create a multi-layered, unconventional hybrid of genre elements that could have reached an audience wider than the usual horror crowd. Sadly, the intent is undermined by obligatory and often poorly interpolated horror vignettes that eventually grow tiresome.
Lots of animals are gored in hopes of sating the anticipated audience appetite for heaping helpings of gore. A crow goes splat on a radiator grill. A rabbit is devoured by an angry dog. Then the dog is run over by an eighteen-wheeler truck. But not before the dog attacks Alan (one of the many “it’s only a dream” scenes) and rips out his throat, in what is apparently an homage to Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA (which Garris reviewed for Cinefantastique magazine decades ago). Of course the scene in SUSPIRIA was disturbing for reasons beyond the blood: the animal was a seeing-eye dog that turned upon its master; the sudden shift from man’s best friend to rabid carnivore gave the scene its real kick, but that’s the kind of thrill mostly lacking in RIDING THE BULLET.
Something went wrong with horror in 1980s, and George Romero and John Carpenter are to blame. That’s not really a fair assessment: the fault lies not with the work of either director but with their bastard progeny, of which RIDING THE BULLET is one example. Carpenter’s 1978 hit HALLOWEEN more or less created the teen-slasher genre, and Romero elevated on-screen splatter to incredible aesthetic heights in DAWN OF THE DEAD (1979). Things went horribly awry, however, when Sean Cunningham combined elements of both films to create FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980).
The box office success of that film established a trend whose effects lingered for decades, proving that a horror film lacking in conventional virtues (plot, suspense, characterization, performance) could still be a hit with teenage audiences if it included enough graphic jolts at regular intervals. This became the conventional wisdom that nearly destroyed the horror genre throughout the ‘80s and much of the ‘90s. Even after films like THE SIXTH SENSE and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT showed that other approaches could be even more successful, it’s still hard for American filmmakers to break out of the formula that requires doses of gratuitous violence at regular intervals. In a film that exists for no other reason than to showcase the special effects, this might be understandable (if not laudable); unfortunately, in a film like RIDING THE BULLET, it works outright harm.
The problem is not that the film is gory (many far bloodier ones have been worthwhile achievements). The problem is that the gore works against the drama of the story, which seems to require a more subtle approach that balances the scares carefully with the tears. When crafting a delicate recipe, it doesn’t take buckets of blood to spoil the brew; only a cup or two will do. The effect all but announces to the audience that they should take the film as nothing more than a fun roller-coaster ride, when the human element needs us to take the film seriously if we are to enjoy the story as a whole.
The film takes place in 1969, when morbid art student Allan (Jonathan Jackson, giving a good performance in spite of problems with the characterization), planning a trip to see John Lennon perform in Toronto, learns that his mother (Barbara Hershey) has had a stroke and sets off hitchhiking back home to see her in the hospital. Along the way, he walks a lot, catches rides with drivers who are wacky when they are not outright crazy, and he flashes back to his memories of growing up with his mother, who took care of him after his father died.
Alan, unfortunately, suffers from the kind of adolescent angst that comes across like self-pity; he’s acting like a depressed high school kid when even though he’s in college, which makes him seem self-absorbed and juvenile. The story is supposed to show him outgrowing this state of mind, but the feeling you get watching him is that he really didn’t deserve a dramatic catharsis when a good swift kick in the ass would probably have done the job just fine.
Problems of audience empathy with the lead character aside, Alan’s morbid streak serves another function: he hallucinates and/or fantasizes about death and dying throughout the film, which provides lots of opportunities for shock effects that, more often than not, turn out not to be real.
These fantasies lead to another special effects-related problem. The film gives Alan a doppelganger, sort of a visible representation of the voice in his head that warns him when a situation might be dangerous. As a dramatic device, this works well enough, and the split screen effects are seamless. However, when Alan’s double first shows up, Garris shows him dissipate in a puff of smoke when Alan walks through him. The effect is apparently supposed to be some kind of showstopper, but it is too transparently an effect—not something we believe at all.
I’m not criticizing the technical quality of the computer-generated image; I’m questioning the aesthetic quality of the result. Decades ago, director Curtis Harrington (who helmed some good psychological horror films in the 1960s) wrote an essay in which he complained that no film had ever successful presented a ghost on screen: the typical see-through double-exposure effect, he claimed, never made you think you were seeing a ghost; instead, you thought, “Oh, that’s supposed to be a ghost.”
That’s the exact feeling I get whenever I see CGI used as the modern equivalent for depicting the supernatural on screen. The effect may look cool, but it is not convincing. What’s worse, it lacks any sense of the uncanny—that inexplicable feeling that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, even if you don’t know why. (For that kind of fear, you need to check out Takashi Shimizu’s JU-ON series of films or his American remake THE GRUDGE.)
The result of these fantasies, flashbacks, and aborted rides is that Allan seems to be going nowhere fast. The first hour of the film moves at an excruciatingly slow pace while we yearn for Allan to get where he’s going. As if aware of this, Garris gooses the plodding narrative with numerous brief splatter moments, which neither advance the story nor tell us anything interesting about Allan but do at least break the tedium.
Then, as if by miracle, the film finally gets its motor running in the last half hour when Allan catches a ride with George Staub (David Arquette), a ghost who has come to claim the life of either Allan or his mother. Shifting gear into full horror film mode, the story turns into a tense confrontation between Allan and George that is both frightening and dramatic, beautifully fusing the two elements of the story into an exciting third act. Allan, who has claimed not to fear death (he’s even attempted suicide), suddenly finds himself confronted with a terrible choice—whether to save himself or his mother. Unlike most films, in which the right choice would be obvious, RIDING THE BULLET manages to shade Allan’s decision in believable gray, paying off in a way that is dramatically satisfying and reasonably “happy,” without making the ending feel like a cop-out.
I have never been a fan of Mick Garri’s work, but I have to admit that the last half hour of RIDING THE BULLET forced me to rethink my position a bit. Clearly, he can do good work when all the elements come together, and I have to give him credit for casting Arquette (the doofus Dewey in the SCREAM trilogy) as the intimidating Staub; Arquette gives a better performance that I ever would have imagined in the role, full of subtle cat-and-mouse menace until he finally shows his hand. And it’s always nice to see Barbara Hershey on screen; the mother-son relationship between her and Alan does help elevate this film a notch above the average horror shockfest.
Ultimately, the neat thing about RIDING THE BULLET, as a horror film, is that it uses the open road at night to generate fear. Sure, the film is set at Halloween, and there is a sequence in a graveyard, but the highway setting provides a distinct feeling that is one step removed from the usual horror clichés, yet just as effective as any of them. It’s too bad it takes so long to get to the good part; the last half hour would have made an excellent short subject. As it stands now, it is good enough to make the rest of the film worth sitting through, even if you’re not a fan of King-based horror.
Opening Night Q&A with Mick Garris.
