The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting
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| The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting | |
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| Directed by | Louis Morneau |
| Produced by | David Bixler |
| Written by | Molly Meeker, Charles R. Meeker, Leslie Scharf |
| Starring | Kari Wührer, Jake Busey, C. Thomas Howell |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 2003 |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Language | English |
| Preceded by | The Hitcher |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting is the 2003 horror sequel to The Hitcher, which stars C. Thomas Howell, returning as Jim Halsey, Kari Wührer as his girlfriend Maggie, and Jake Busey as psychotic hitchhiker Jack.
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[edit] Tagline
Evil Waits Again By The Side Of The Road.
[edit] Plot
Fifteen years after Jim Halsey's horror filled trip through Texas at the mercy of a crazed murderer, he works as a police officer, but has recently been suspended for using excessive force on a kidnapping suspect. It is revealed his girlfriend, Maggie, has her own crop dusting business. Jim makes a call to retired Captain Estridge in Texas, who asks Jim to come down to Texas to talk to him face to face about his mental scars from the last movie. Maggie, who obviously does not know about the event, pleads with Jim to let her tag along.
Arriving in Texas, the couple pick up a car that Estridge has left for them, and set off to his house. Jim notices a sign along the highway announcing DANGER: DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS which sets him into flashback mode. The two see an RV that has run off the road, with blood dripping through the door. Maggie wants to stop and help, but Jim speeds up, irritating her and making her more curious about his erratic behavior. Soon, a motorcycle speeds past them and wrecks. Maggie lets the driver into the back, against Jim's understandable protests. The hitcher reveals his name to be Jim, and after Maggie tells him her occupation he remarks "A farm girl!" He asks them what they are in Texas for, and Jim responds with "None of your damn business." The Hitcher doesn't appear fazed by Jim's impolite behavior. Jim suddenly envision himself and Maggie being killed by the Hitcher, and pulls a gun on him and evicts him from the car. As they speed away, Jim informs Maggie of his last experiences with hitchers, while the Hitcher lights a cigarette and says to no one in particular, "Damn fool." An 18 wheeler stops behind him, and the Hitcher presumably steals it.
Jim and Maggie continue to Estridge's home, but are pulled over by a cop.[1] The same 18 wheeler, however, pulls up. The driver steps out, and appears to be the same driver as earlier. The cop says something to the effect of, "Earl, I'm on business here," to which the driver replies, "Well hell, so am I!" and promptly shoots the cop with a revolver. The man slides his 'hair' off his head, and we can see it to be the Hitcher (Jack), who scalped the driver and wore his hair as a disguise. Jim and Maggie get into the car. The Hitcher tries to grab Maggie and is dragged by the car before being forced out.
The couple then arrive at the Estridge residence late at night. They find Mrs. Estridge dead in the house, and then go to investigate the barn, finding the captain dead in there. Cops suddenly swarm the residence, including what appears to be the newest sheriff. Jim and Maggie discover the Hitcher in the hayloft of the barn, but can't do much about it, since the Hitcher has a rifle and they don't. The Hitcher fires a few shots at Maggie but hits Jim when he pushes her out the way. The Hitcher picks off several officers, causing a hail of bullets to be fired on Jim and Maggie. Maggie drags Jim into a truck inside the barn. She drives off with him, evading the cops and the Hitcher. Jim tells her to kill him ASAP, no matter what he says, and dies. Maggie falls asleep in the desert. When she wakes up she is attacked by the Hitcher and knocked unconscious. She then wakes up inside an abandoned water tower with Jack leering down at her. He tells her to look out, the tower isn't very sturdy, and leaves. Maggie escapes as the tower collapses, and takes the 18-wheeler truck that the Hitcher stole earlier to a remote gas station. She goes in, finding a live clerk. After making a phone call and using a water pump out back to clean up she returns to find her dead. She picks up a souvenir Tomahawk, sees another dead clerk, and the Hitcher in the clerk's uniform. He acts uniformly normal, taunting her. She asks him why he's doing this, and he responds, "Sometimes you just get bored of watching television." Taking the tomahawk from Maggie he then cuts off his finger with the intention of blaming Maggie when the cops arrive.
The cops arrive again, and the Hitcher fires at them with a shotgun. He is grabbed by the cops, as is Maggie as she pursues him, and he concocts a fake story where she killed the clerks and cops and cut off his finger. He calls himself Jack in the station, rather than Jim, which convinces Maggie he is the same man as 15 years before. Maggie is being transported to jail as the sheriff begins to have doubts about her guilt. However, he is shot by Jack, who frees Maggie from the truck, throwing a revolver to her to make it appear that she killed all those policemen before escaping in a tanker truck. She takes several bad shots at him, and he gets away. Realizing that there is no way to prove her innocence, Maggie finally becomes aware that the only thing to end all this is to kill Jack before the police find and kill her. Maggie steals a crop duster plane from a nearby airfield, then goes after Jack. They exchange gunfire, air to ground style, before Maggie kamikazies the plane into the truck. She escapes the fireball, as does the truck, which grinds to a halt. She approaches it and finds an unconscious Jack. She ties him up to the truck, (much like the character of Nash in the first movie). Jack pleads not to kill him because he claims not to be the same person, but Maggie cares little, and places a bag of feed on the clutch, ripping it open with a knife, slowly causing the truck to roll forward.
However, the police show up again. Still thinking that Maggie's responsible for all the killing, they free Jack and shoot Maggie in the leg as she attempts to enter the truck's cab. Predictably, as soon as he is free, Jack grabs a gun from the holster of one of the two policemen who free him, and in seconds, kills both cops. Maggie picks up a shotgun, aiming it at him. He taunts her one last time: "Are you still scared?" Maggie replies: "No. I just don't want to get burned." Maggie aims the shotgun at the tanker, which is leaking flammable fluid caused from the crash. Maggie fires a shotgun blast at the leak, igniting the fluid. The truck explodes, incinerating Jack and blowing him to pieces.
[edit] Similarities to the Original and Remake
The plot is basically in the same vein of the original, with the genders of the protagonists reversed. The 'sheriff aspect' is also similar.
The 2007 remake bears more resemblance to this movie than the original.
[edit] References
- ^ In a factual error in the script, the policemen sees a gun holster on Jim and begins to arrest him for it, but carrying a firearm through Texas in this fashion is not illegal.
