This is a reasonably faithful remake of Robert Harmon’s 1986 cult-slasher wanna-be, which itself seemed a distillation of Steven Spielberg’s 1971 Duel. You know the drill: a nefarious stranger stalks innocent passer-throughs, and when the victims stop for help, no one believes them, or if someone does, the fiend dispatches the Good Samaritan in gory fashion. Sophia Bush (John Tucker Must Die) and a scruffy Zachary Knighton play the young lovers who give John Ryder (Sean Bean lacking Rutger Hauer’s camp, but effective nonetheless) a lift in the middle of New Mexico. Round one: he wields a knife; they kick him to the curb and continue onward to their spring-break destination. But they never shake the relentless Ryder, who goes Terminator as the bodies pile up. Music-video director Dave Meyers applies a slick sheen to the action, but the question that plagued the original still lingers: what drives Mr. Ryder? Without that, the whole exercise is just fumes.
