Stephen King's Riding the Bullet

A young man takes a ride with the Grim Reaper in this adaptation of a Stephen King short story, but the journey proves more deadly for the viewer than the protagonist. When Alan (Jonathan Jackson)--a gloomy and suicidal art student at the University of Maine circa 1969--receives word that his widowed mother has suffered a stroke, he sets off to hitchhike home, catching rides with a succession of oddballs (a drug-addled hippie, a deranged farmer obsessed with his dead wife) amidst continuous portents of death (corpses that briefly reanimate, threatening dogs, cars that come out of nowhere and nearly run people down). But all that's merely a prelude to his encounter with George Staub (David Arquette), who drives a Christine-like hotrod, smells suspiciously of formaldehyde, proclaims himself a minister of death, and challenges Alan to choose between dying himself or allowing his mother to breathe her last. In the ensuing ghoulish chase, Alan tries to escape George, reach his mother's bedside, and come to terms with how his father died (an odyssey metaphorically compared to riding a frightening roller-coaster called The Bullet). Perhaps on the page King's tale had some resonance in view of the author's own brush with death in a 1999 car accident, but director Mick Garris' film is little more than an incoherent succession of horror-movie clichés, cluttered with so many flashbacks, misleading premonitions, hallucinations, and inexplicable apparitions that it induces more tedium than terror. As King movies go, it's better than Maximum Overdrive and The Mangler, but not by much. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include two audio commentaries (one with director Mick Garris; the other with Garris, producer Joel T. Smith, star Jonathan Jackson, and other cast members), a “Shooting the Bullet” mini-featurette gallery with seven short scenes (20 min.), an artwork gallery (3 min.), and a trailer. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a disappointing horror flick.] (F. Swietek)