LYT's Weblog

Right. Well, that’s just one of the problems with Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet, the latest collaboration between the prolific Maine author and his favorite adapter, director Mick Garris (Sleepwalkers, TV’s The Stand and The Shining). David Arquette is supposed to be the scariest guy in the movie. There’s also some older guy in a black robe with dark gray monster make-up on his face, but good luck keeping the smile off of yours when he starts chanting for protagonist Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson) to kill himself. Yes, the lead character’s name really is Alan Parker, presumably a homage to the director of Angel Heart, one of many movies that clearly inspired this tale.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The movie begins with typical Wonder Years-style faux home movies that go on way too long, then grabs our attention by showing a gratuitously naked girl modeling for art students (we never see this girl again, but without her we might not know that this isn’t a made-for-TV movie). It’s 1969, and our Alan keeps drawing scary pictures that resemble those of Swamp Thing creator Berni Wrigthson, and often hallucinates a doppelganger of himself who cracks jokes and gives him obnoxious advice. Alan also hallucinates alternate “scary” takes of things that are about to happen, which leads to numerous “Whoa, that was all just a dream!” fake-outs. An exhausting number of them, in fact.

When his mother (Barbara Hershey) has a stroke on Halloween, Alan gives away his valuable John Lennon concert tickets and instead decides to hitchhike back to his hometown to see mom in the hospital. Along the way, he will get rides from a pot-smoking, draft-dodging soldier disguised as a hippie; an incessantly crotch-grabbing Cliff Robertson; and finally, David Arquette. Imagine a feature-length version of the “Large Marge” sequence from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and you won’t be too far off, only that was scarier.

Garris may well be a good buddy of King’s, but he’s also very much a TV guy, and it shows -- King may prefer Garris’ TV adaptation of The Shining to Stanley Kubrick’s film, but it’s doubtful many others do. Riding the Bullet doesn’t feel like an actual film; the color scheme, lighting, and framing are all more reminiscent of ‘80s horror anthology shows like Freddy’s Nightmares or Monsters (Garris did in fact direct an episode of the former). Although most of the action is set on country roads at night, everything is brightly lit by what must surely be the biggest, whitest moon ever! Except then a character explicitly mentions that it’s a harvest moon. D’oh!

When it comes to adapting King, sometimes absolute fealty just doesn’t translate. Hearing a crow suddenly say “What the fuck are you lookin’ at?” in a Joe Pesci-like voice, when shown matter-of-factly, doesn’t play as scary or trippy, just stupid. And for sheer absurdity, how about the scene in which Alan is chased by rednecks in a pick-up truck? First of all, he could easily run into the nearby woods, between the trees, but instead he cuts across the wide expanse of grass where the truck has no problem following him. Fortunately, he manages to find a large assortment of rusty old appliances in the middle of a field, and he hides in one. Unfortunately, there’s a tarantula inside with him. You know, one of those wild tarantulas that are so common in Maine.

As for the “Bullet,” it’s a roller coaster that Alan waited in line for as a child, then got scared and refused to ride. In a cloying coda sequence, we are also told that it’s a metaphor for life, because you either get on or you don’t, and then you die, or something. Honestly, if we’re going to get that simplistic, one could make a metaphor out of anything. Did you ever know that life is like writing a film review? You either express yourself well or you don’t, and then it’s over.

See how easy that was?

Film reviews, however, unlike roller coasters, don’t exist in amusement parks, settings beloved by the many hack horror directors who saw Carnival of Souls once upon a time and decided they’d like to crib from it. Gee, there’s a hall of mirrors -- wonder if our hero will see a scary reflection inside? Oh wait, it was just a hallucination. No, wait! It’s now a flashback! Or is it a dream? Do we care? Perhaps in the hands of a surrealist, we might, but Garris isn’t that complex a craftsman, and it’s clear that he’s just going for cheap shocks. Unfortunately he’s none too successful even at that.