How these aging actors cannot see how silly they look....anyhoo...we yet get ANOTHER one of Stephen King's lame adaptations from a short story...a moral Tale of Death that is a fine premise however it plays out like Garris took a gaggle of Stephen King's short stories, wadded them up and pasted the pages together...it really is a mess...there are maybe a couple of interesting scares but thats it...the first problem with the movie is lead Jonathan Jackson who definitely represents the dark and brooding "suffering" effeminate male who speaks in an annoying drone that is quite common for the Male of the 2000's..Jackson is just awful as the lead and cannot garner any empathy or sympathy with his drony lackluster acting...I think this movie was probably aimed at the conflicted early 20 somethings...the generation who all got a trophy for existing...the best eye opening parts of this movie was the campy performance of art teacher Matt "Max Headroom" Frewer...very funny and I thought appropriate..and the GORGEOUS Catherine Devine just sitting there as a nude model...that was about the only two scenes that animated me other than snickering at Barbara Hershey-Stein's pie hole....

Riding the Bullet is set during 1969 & starts as college art student Jessica Hadley (Erika Christensen) tells her fellow art student boyfriend Alan Parker (Jonathan Jackson) that she is splitting up with him, it's his birthday as well. That night Jessica reveals that it was just a ploy to set-up a surprise party but Alan gets some bad news as he learns that his mother Jean (Barbara Hershey) has had a stroke & is in hospital, Alan decides to hike all the way to Lewiston & be with his sick mother. Alan manages to get several rides as he gets closer to Lewiston but finally ends up in the red Plymouth Fury of George Staub (David Arquette) whom Alan becomes to believe is dead, George offers him a deal in which he has to make a choice whether his mother or himself dies that very night...This American, German & Canadian co-production was written, co-produced & directed by Mick Garris & was based on the internet publish story Riding the Bullet by Stephen King, any horror film fan worth anything will know that generally speaking Stephen King books don't make particularly good films although it seems his name sells so I guess people will continue to make make crappy films based on his usually great work. I have not read Riding the Bullet nor had I even heard of it before seeing this adaptation so I cannot compare the two but I get the impression that the novel might have worked better. I am not really sure what Riding the Bullet is meant to be, is it a horror? Is it a drama? Is it a sentimental coming of age story? Is it just an oddball curiosity with no real deep meaning or ambition? Riding the Bullet is certainly a hard film to categorise & I am not quite sure who it is meant to appeal to, surely it's too tame & sedate for the horror crowd yet a little too out there & extreme for the low key melodrama fans. The script seems to handing out mixed messages all over the place, it never has central focus & the constant flashbacks, dreams, & fantasies that go through Alan's mind become annoying & are only there to add a bit of gore & a bit of dark humour. At 100 minutes long Riding the Bullet is watchable & if you can get into the sloppy narrative & like the character's then you may enjoy it, I didn't think it was terrible as it had a few moments here & there but overall the film feels shallow, unfocused & almost unfinished. A strange sort of road trip, dark comedy horror thriller that I didn't hate but didn't love either.Mick Garris seems to have a thing about Stephen King adaptations having worked on as either writer or director on the likes of Sleepwalkers (1992) & Quicksilver Highway (1997) as well as the television series The Stand (1994), The Shining (1997), Desperation (2006) & the recent Bag of Bones (2011). Riding the Bullet has a few gory moments, a Dog killing a cute Rabbit, a Crow eating some roadkill & then being pulped by an ambulance, a talking severed head, a ripped-off hand & a bit of blood splatter but nothing that scary or extreme. This is well made for what it is but the soap opera happy ending sentiment didn't do anything for me & left me feeling rather cold. There's an obvious nod to King's killer car novel Christine as the red Plymouth Fury turns up as the preferred car choice of the dead.With a supposed budget of about $5,000,000 this has good production values & looks the part, the special effects are pretty good too. Filmed in Canada. The acting is alright, the actor's bring a certain warmth & likability to the character's & that's the main reason I stuck with it.Riding the Bullet isn't typical Stephen King material, those used to top notch horror will be disappointed here & while I didn't hate Riding the Bullet I can't think of much to recommend it other than it's unusual & is watchable. Not awful but not particularly good either a film like this comes down to personal taste really.

after reading some of these awful reviews, I have to conclude that you need to be in your 50s to enjoy this movie. well, I am, and I did! a lot.it was really beautifully shot, the story was interesting, and the acting was fine. Barbara Hershey has always been one of my favorite actresses, and I love the fact that her face is still HER face! the late '60s vibe was a little hit-or-miss (somebody above mentioned the plastic bong), but the music was perfect. if you like creepy movies that also make you think, you'll like this, although you might find the resolution a bit unsatisfying. if you just want to see zombies eat humans, you might not.

Want to create some really dreadful fiction? If so arm yourself with plenty of flashbacks and plenty of pointless premonitions too. That's what this movie is made up of, there's no real story and the ending is the kind of mawkish crap you'd get from a fifteen year old bashing out their first novel.I couldn't really get into any of the characters, especially the protagonist who just seemed to be whiny and other than having his joint stolen by the grim reaper had little to moan about in the grand scheme of things. I didn't really warm to his mother either even though she's supposed to be super cool. What kind of mother gives her son five across the eyes for not wanting to ride a roller-coaster? I threw up all over the back seat of the car when I was a kid after riding the spinning tea cup ride and very little was said about that.In short it's just not a very engaging movie, it has a couple of interesting moments but they are few and far between.