MickGarris, director of Riding The Bullet, is no stranger to adapting the work of Stephen King for the screen, having previously tackled TV versions of Quicksilver Highway, The Stand, and The Shining, and the big screen adaptation of Sleepwalkers. Of all the directors that have turned King's blockbuster books into movies, Garris seems to be the one of those best able to capture King's literary style on film. This is great news for fans of King's work, but not so great for me; I've always struggled with his books, finding them something of a chore to work through. Naturally, this is also how I felt about Garris's adaptation of Riding The Bullet.

Troubled teen Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson) is hitch-hiking to see his mother in hospital. On the way, he encounters many strange people and before his journey is through, he is forced to confront his demons and make some life-changing decisions.

I must stress that this is not a horror film; there are spooky moments, but these are not necessarily supernatural, and are more likely the result of the lead character's fertile imagination. To me, the film was more about not wasting the gift of life, dealing with guilt, and the importance of making good choices.

Garris attempts some particularly strange visual gimmickry during the telling of this tale, but I personally found his quirky directorial style to be annoying, and a truly awful performance from David Arquette certainly didn't help matters; only one or two genuinely creepy moments manage to stop this from being a complete waste of time. It is ironic that, for a film about 'making good choices', the makers of this movie sure seem to have made some bad ones.

Receiving news his mother is dying, a college student decides to hitchhike out to go see her, but as he gets closer and closer to his goal he begins to feel a dangerous supernatural entity is playing games with him and vows to put an end to them before it's too late.

This here actually wasn't that bad at times. the film is incredibly enjoyable and entertaining whenever there's something that occurs out on the road as a mind-game, as not only is something actually happening but the set-ups are unique and really enjoyable. Stumbling across the highway accident one is really good, as the supernatural payoff is highly entertaining among the believable chaos and panic at the scene, and the rabbit attack is a glorious one because of the film's sole use of animals amongst all the macabre imagery. Also interesting is the chase in the pick-up truck which starts off pretty tensely through the field before going into the junkyard, as well as the interplay in the car for the final ride as the word-play works wonders in the suspense of the situation followed by a couple great gore gags to keep it going. Likewise, the ending is pretty tense with the hospital race coming at the end of the last rather good car sequence on the road, and all of these fun scenes really start to pile up after awhile to make this quite enjoyable. Along with the general plot-line which is pretty unique and really creative, these here are what work for the film as this one here didn't have all that many flaws. One of the main ones here is that the film features a rather irritating trick of resorting for a flashback here at every opportunity, making for a very irritating habit of getting confusing when it shouldn't. The fact that it shows the family history as much as it does is one of the problems, but here it just throws useless scene after another detailing it, then it decides to throw in the flashbacks which barely makes it any better by going to a time that doesn't help revealing important information about the story or why anything is happening, and all they do is add to the confusion which is a really hard task to accomplish. What is also tough to understand is the motive for the main villain who initially appearing as a sort of Grim Reaper-like figure that spends half the running time talking away with the supposed victim and never tricks them into killing or any other vile activities as there were plenty of available times to do that to pad out the film's running time which really makes little sense here. Otherwise, the only other flaw here is the film's rather dreary pacing since it spends so much time driving around that this is locked in on a singular location for so much of the time that it feels repetitive quite easily which makes this one feel boring at certain points along the way. These are what hurt the film.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and Nudity.

It's 1969. Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson) is an art student at the University of Maine obsessed with death. His girlfriend Jessica (Christensen) throws him a surprise birthday party and finds him attempting a suicide by slicing his wrist in the bath tub. He decides to go to a John Lennon concert in Toronto with his friends. Then he gets a call that his mother Jean (Barbara Hershey) had a stroke and is in the hospital. He hitchhikes and encounters strange events.

The constant imaginary edits keeps faking out the story. It disrupts any flow to the movie. It's a mess. Jonathan Jackson lacks the charisma to lead a movie. He is unable to draw me into the story and provides next to no energy. The movie limps along without much drive as Alan deals with one character after another. It's like a random collection of horror stories from the road. It's probably one of the worst Stephen King adaptations I have ever seen.