Mick Garris has filmed more novels from Stephen King (the TV series of “The Shining” and “The Stand” and the movie “Sleepwalkers”) and with “Riding The Bullet” they do it again. Pitiful enough it’s a bit of a sloppy movie that has some good moments (like the fear of Alan when he’s walking in a forest alone and when he hears a barking mad dog). The story is about an art student that is attracted to death. After his girlfriend left him he is trying an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide, but it gets him even closer to death in al his appearances. When he gets the message that his mother got a stroke he’s hitching to get there. During this travel he’s confronted with death and in the end have to make a kind of ‘Sophie’s Choice’. Pitiful enough the movie has no real content and the tension isn’t that what you expect from a thriller. Still the movie has a very personal touch from Stephen King, because the fact that the father is run over by a car is reminiscent of that of the accident Stephen had. His near death experience seems to be integrated in the movie as well, but it’s a pity that the living dead in this movie seem to have been erected from earlier movies. Therefore “Riding The Bullet” isn’t one of the best movies of a Stephen King novel.
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