The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting (2003)

The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting was presented to the public as being a
sequel to the classic 1986 horror flick The Hitcher. In actuality, it
is nothing but a cheap and pathetic ripoff. The alleged “twists and
surprises” in this movie are so lame, it is hardly surprising that it
did not take long for the DVD and VHS editions of this show to reach the
dollar store market.

Essentially, The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting is really a Kari Wuhrer
thriller masquerading as a sequel to the original classic Hitcher.
Wuhrer is good looking, but this does not make up for either her poor
acting skills or the bad script for this flick. Just what were they
thinking when they greenlighted this project?

As with so much recent inferior grade flicks from Hollywood, The Hitcher
II: I’ve Been Waiting is a direct to video release. This all but
guarantees that it will receive little if any critical scrutiny.
This in turn aids and abets thepurveyors of this trash in their efforts
to deceive the viewing public into purchasing this drivel.

This movie is horrible and is nothing but a pointless remake of a
classic masquerading as a sequel. It is full of clichés, bad acting
and is completely predictable to boot. The first five minutes or so
is very good but soon dissipates into a mess of mediocrity and worse.
The rest of the movie is an exercise in unintentional absurdity and
none of the situations are resolved.

The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting begins when Jim Halsey (C. Thomas
Howell)is unjustifiably fired from the local police force. In order to
shake the bad feelings from his life, Halsey and his girlfriend Maggie
(Kari Wuhrer) travel to Texas to see an old friend. However, the
traveling pair soon encounter a strange and sininster hitchhiker named Jack (Jake
Busey) who has evil plans for both Jim & Maggie.

However, Jack is only an inferior ripoff of the hitchhiker played by
Rutger Hauer in the original The Hitcher. This hitchhiker fails to
project anything like the level of malice or evil that Hauer did. In
any event, Jim & Maggie flee from the hitchhiker who follows them and leaves a trail of
corpses in his wake. Essentially, Jim & Maggie are pawns in the evil hitchhiker’s psychotic
game.

Up until this point, about one third of the way into the movie, The
Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting was a near carbon copy remake of the
original The Hitcher. All of a sudden, it detours from the classic
story and becomes a Kari Wuhrer thriller that revolves around a
standard Hollywood cookie cutter formula. C. Thomas Howell dies in a patently
unbelievable manner and it is up to the manifestly talentless Wuhrer to
carry the show. In other words, the movie goes to Hell in a hen basket.

The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting is a good example of the kind of dreck
that Hollywood all too often releases as direct to video movies. It is stupid, hackneyed,
poorly thought out and suffers from poor production values. It is a movie that ought to be avoided
like the plague. Definitely not recommended.