Riding the Bullet

Alan Parker is a young art student in 1969, troubled by visions of death and struggling to find his place in the world. After a suicide attempt on his birthday is interrupted by friends, and after his girlfriend leaves him, he learns that his mother has suffered a stroke and lies in hospital. With no car of his own, he sets out to hitchhike across the country to reach her. Along the way he is picked up by a stranger named George Staub, whose dark secret turns the journey into a confrontation with everything Alan fears. The film is based on a novel by Stephen King.

Mick Garris directed and wrote the screenplay, working from that source. It sits between The Judge and Desperation in a directing career that also includes Critters 2, Psycho IV: The Beginning, Sleepwalkers and the miniseries adaptation of The Stand. Jonathan Jackson plays Alan, with Barbara Hershey as his mother Jean, David Arquette as George Staub, Erika Christensen as Jessica Hadley, Cliff Robertson as a farmer and Nicky Katt as Ferris. The production, made in Canada on a budget of about 5 million dollars, credits 35 cast members and 85 crew.

Audience response was modest: on IMDb it holds 5.2 out of 10 from around 11,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 5.1 from roughly 226 votes. A film critics' rating of 4.1 out of 10, drawn from 22 reviews, places professional assessment slightly below the viewer scores, though all three measures point to a largely negative reception.