Riding the Bullet / Mick Garris / Additional notes

 I mentioned on my old review posted on the blog, Tubi had Riding the Bullet (2004) available on their streaming service and I was in the mood for a companion piece to 'Salem's Lot' (1979). I just started a little bit of 'Salem's Lot' early Sunday afternoon, with the intention of spacing out the two-part mini-series over next week. I really like the setup in Jerusalem's Lot with the novelist, David Soul, looking at a reputed haunted house for a book about it, later realizing that the owner of the house is a vampire, protected by James Mason. 

Riding the Bullet is a film I always find a peculiar experiment by director Mick Garris. He gets inside Jonathan Jackson's mind as he goes on a road trip, mostly at night, back home from college to visit his sick mother, eventually encountering the increasingly deteriorating David Arquette, who tells him that he'll have to choose between his life or his mother's (Barbara Hershey). Erika Christensen was in a lot of content back then, appearing as Jackson's lover during the "summer of love" in 1969. We get a brief glimpse by Mick Garris into that era with some time on a college campus where Vietnam activists protesting the draft, plenty of weed smoking, and folks declaring loving everyone as the better option. But when Jackson is so stoned he's visited by Mr. Death (who takes a drag of the pot cig while encouraging Jackson to slit his wrist with a razor blade, as pictures on the wall also tell him to do it) and cuts his wrist on accident when Christensen and friends arrive to yell "Surprise, Happy Birthday!", the film moves away from campus as he heads home, taking Old Bridge Road, eventually seeing a lot of weird visions or hallucinations. Just weird shit. Like a dog tearing up a rabbit then getting hit by a truck, a raven eating dead flesh off the road while swearing at him for watching, or a car accident victim opening his eyes to talk to him; Jackson has plenty of odd encounters that seem to be manifestations of his own struggling psyche. Garris loves to interrupt a conversation or scene with something abrupt like Cliff Robertson talking to his dead wife or grabbing Jackson's hand with an unwillingness to let go, or David Arquette emerging from mother's coffin to pull Jackson inside. There is the vision of being pulled from The Bullet rollercoaster by Mr. Death and thrown to his death, his father telling him he didn't die the way his mother told him, or the entire ride in Arquette's car (Arquette scratches at the morgue stitches on his abdomen, with his own cigarette smoke leaving from a neck wound) which is some surreal fever dream. 

I can't say I find Riding the Bullet altogether satisfying, and Garris has always been a director with a lot of tonal issues. Garris just seems to enjoy shaking his narrative with these intrusions that are jarring. Just when you sort of settle into the plot, Garris has the tendency to lob an odd moment or scene at you. Like two hunters with shotguns chasing after Jackson as he flees into the woods, finding an auto junkyard where he hides in a decaying freezer, fending off a spider. And when Jackson arrives at the hospital, approaching the desk, Garris plays out like three scenarios regarding the kid, his mother, what the nurse says, and the doctor about Hershey's condition. 

Arquette's arc -- he perished in an auto accident of his own making, reaching for the radio, his eyes off the road, eventually dodging one vehicle, only to barrel right into a hay truck, resulting in an explosion -- is quite all over the place and off its rocker. Arquette informing Jackson he can't get away and must choose between him and his mom, with this "chase" ensuing. The film was always heading to Arquette, but the road trip almost felt like vignettes. 

Like Garris' work, this will be a frustrating experience for many. I know a lot of my peers hate Garris' work. I have a soft spot for Garris, myself. I have a soft spot for road trips, too. And struggling folks trying to figure out their lives while going on a journey of self-discovery. Garris just happens to inject a lot of weirdness in Jackson's journey. 2.5/5