POP UP CINEMA BRIGHTON

This rip-roaring vehicular thriller roars proudly in the tradition of motorway-stalking cult classics like Duel and Road Games - but The Hitcher boasts a far more potent secret weapon: the maniacal menace of Blade Runner legend, Rutger Hauer.

​

Tasked with transporting a car cross-country, young motorist Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell, of The Outsiders fame) begins to nod off behind the wheel and makes a decision that proves catastrophically misguided, he picks up a hitchhiker for company. The stranger (Hauer) calmly claims to be a killer, and although Jim manages to force him from the vehicle, any sense of relief is short-lived. What follows is a relentless descent into terror as the hitchhiker’s full psychopathic mania is unleashed. With the help of truck-stop waitress Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh, later of The Hateful Eight and Single White Female), Jim is thrust into a desperate fight for survival.

​

Hauer is electrifying. Weaponising his trademark wild-eyed intensity, he delivers a performance that feels almost supernatural, an embodiment of random cruelty and unstoppable destruction. He doesn’t simply play a villain; he becomes an elemental force stalking the asphalt.

​

Despite unleashing one brutal set piece after another, The Hitcher remains lean, mean, and stripped to the bone. It plays like a sun-scorched fever dream, ruthless, existential, and soaked in dread. Marrying eerie, uncanny atmosphere with unapologetic B-movie thrills, it stands as a rare genre piece that is both artfully minimal, pulse-poundingly savage with a lingering stylistic mood that’s hard to shake. The Hitcher is a perfectly calibrated, tension-soaked Friday night big screen treat.