Producers: Marc Benardout, Hugh Broder, Jeremy L. Kotin, James Harris and Mark Lane   Director: Jeffrey Darling   Screenplay: Evan M. Wiener   Cast: Jacob Elordi. Zachary Quinto, Patrick J. Adams, Pheonix Notary, Ananyaa Shah, Troy Evans, Alexandra Doke, Nicolette Doke, Christopher Guyton and John Lee Ames Distributor: Vertical

Grade: D+

One would think that a movie about a guy who picks up a hitch-hiker who turns out to be a psychopathic killer would generate some thrills and suspense—remember how Eric Red and Robert Harmon turned the premise into a study of existential dread in “The Hitcher” (the 1986 original, of course, not the inferior remake)?  But “He Went That Way” (a meaningless title, incidentally) manages to transform a potentially exciting idea into an incredibly dull, pointless picture.

It’s based loosely on an incident from the life of Larry Lee Ranes, who was suspected of multiple murders and convicted of one, the killing of Gary Smock, with whom he’d hitched a ride in 1964.  He was found guilty and given a sentence of life imprisonment in Michigan; he died, still in prison, last November at the age of seventy-eight.  Ranes referred to the incident in interviews he gave to Conrad Hilberry, who wrote about him and his brother Danny, also convicted for separate murders, in the 1987 book “Luke Karamazov.”  And it’s been discussed by Dave Pitts, who picked up the nineteen-year old Ranes outside Las Vegas in 1964 on his way to Minnesota; in the back of his Chevy Suburban Carryall was his trained chimp, Spanky, with whom he performed in the Ice Capades.  Ranes threatened him (he would confess to previously killing three men) but, he later recounted, was so entranced by the bond between Pitts and Spanky that he relented; they all drove to Michigan (Ranes was headed for his home town of Kalamazoo, where he would kill Smock), and there they went their separate ways.

In the script by Evan M. Wiener, it’s not only the names that have been changed, though they are.  Pitts has become Jim Goodwin (a buttoned-down Zachary Quinto), who’s on his way to Chicago in an old Carryall that’s having engine trouble.  His career is in trouble too, since Spanky (played, in part, by Phoenix Notary in a very unconvincing costume—elsewhere he’s a puppet, presumably through the special effects non-wizardry ascribed to J. Alan Scott), with whom he appeared on television, is getting old and is no longer in demand.  Larry is renamed Bobby Falls and is played by Jacob Elordi as an unstable James Dean-style poseur who’s just been drummed out of the Air Force, clearly for good psychological reasons; a prologue shows him dumping one of his dead shooting victims out of a car, but now he’s thumbing for a ride outside a remote gas station on Route 66.  Jim’s stopped there to have the engine repaired by the cranky mechanic (Christopher Guyton), who is threatening to run Bobby off with a baseball bat until Goodwin defuses things by offering the kid a ride.

The movie tries to build some tension in a series of episodes as the trio pass through various states on the way to the Windy City.  There’s an encounter with a motel clerk (Troy Evans) who tries to sell Jim a knife, pointing out the dangers of travel; a stop at the shabby trailer of Goodwin’s brother-in-law Saul (Patrick J. Adams), a dissolute priest who owes him money; and a night with two naïve Oklahoma sisters (Alexandra and Nicolette Doke) the guys meet up with at a Tulsa dance hall.  Brief inserts illustrate a bit of Bobby’s past, most notably his killing of two more previous victims.  But as soporifically written by Wiener, limply directed by Jeffrey Darling, sluggishly paced by editor Adam Wills and played by Quinto, Elordi and the colorless supporting cast in a monochromatic fashion (all set to a nondescript score by Nicolas Rosen and Jamie N. Commons), none of them generate any sense of danger or excitement; despite Elordi’s overwrought efforts to come across as charismatically menacing, they just drag along without working up to a climax. 

Nor does the relationship between Jim and Bobby develop any complexity; it’s just a repetitive pattern of Bobby getting upset over something and Jim anxiously trying to cool him down, often by playing off the kid’s fascination with Spanky, whom he’d seen on the tube and considers a lovable celebrity.  There’s also little payoff in the big reveal in Chicago, where Goodwin isn’t actually planning to perform with the chimp in a “private gig” as he insists, but rather provide for the animal’s future in a deal with a mysterious woman (Ananyaa Shah).

And it certainly doesn’t help that this is one of the most unconvincing road trips ever put on screen.  The narrative is supposed to take us through several states, but the movie was shot entirely in southern California, and the production design (Ryan Martin) and cinematography (Sean Bagley) prove singularly unsuccessful in disguising the fact that the locations don’t change much.  Inserting shots of signs blaring “Welcome to Oklahoma,” “Welcome to Missouri” and “Welcome to Illinois” periodically while the landscapes remain obstinately the same and the urban areas indistinguishable from one another doesn’t do the trick.  The costumes by Nancy Gould don’t do much to convince us we’re in the 1960s either.              

It should be noted that Darling, a veteran cinematographer and director of commercials, music videos and shirt films, died in a surfing accident off the Australian coast before “He Went That Way,” his first and only feature, completed post-production.  One can only wish that the picture, put into final shape by his collaborators, were a better tribute to his memory; but it proves a dull slog through muddled narrative territory rather than the nerve-wracking trip through the American heartland that it might have been. 

Producers: Timothy Woodward Jr., Natalie Burn and Jeffrey Reddick   Director: Timothy Woodward Jr.   Screenplay: Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor   Cast: Cam Gigandet, Natalie Burn, Jason Patric, Orlando Jones, Ser’Darius Blain, Pancho Moler, Neb Chupin, D.Y. Sao,  Sam Lee Herring,  Alan Silva and Nicole Arlyn   Distributor: Cineverse

Grade: D+

Natalie Burn is no Julia Roberts, and “Til Death Do Us Part” is no “Runaway Bride,” though Timothy Woodward Jr.’s movie begins with a leave-him-at-the-altar scene that suggests it might be a rom-com.  But it quickly turns into something that, while not exactly a horror movie, is certainly a horrible one, given its abundance of violence and gore, as well as its groan-inducing attempts at dark humor.

Burns plays the bride who leaves her groom (Ser’Darius Blain) unwed, fleeing the ceremony to take refuge at her late father’s posh estate.  She’s followed there by the seven groomsmen, led by the best man (Cam Gigandet); the others are played by D.Y. Sao, Sam Lee Herring, Orlando Jones, Alan Silva, and the only two to have nicknames—hulking Big Sexy (Neb Chupin) and little person T-Bone (Pancho Moler).  The groom orders them to keep an eye on her until he can arrive.

Interspersed with the “present day” scenes set at the estate are flashbacks to the trip to Puerto Rico where the couple got engaged.  While there they meet an older married couple (Jason Patric and Nicole Arlyn) at a bar, and the next morning the latter invite them for a day of fishing on their yacht.  During the day, the engaged couple’s real purpose in coming to the island is revealed.

All the characters, it turns out, are, or were, employees of an outfit called The University, which is an academy of assassins, one to which every employee is supposed to be committed for life.  And while the groom and groomsmen are meant to bring the bride back to the organization—and the altar—she has other ideas, which cause the men to aim for a more definitive outcome.

So what follows is a cat-and-mouse scenario in which each man confronts the bride, still dressed in her gown, in bloody combat, and she dispatches them one after another, often without a weapon but sometimes employing one, like a sword or—in one case—even a chainsaw.  The final battle, of course, is between bride and groom, presented as a sort of dance of death.

Burn, in fact, uses her training in dance—she performed in ballet—to pull off some agile moves, which must have been difficult in such a flowing dress.  Her acting, however, is at best rudimentary and her line deliveries stiff.  Blain tries to seem smooth but is decidedly uncharismatic as the unlucky groom, and most of the groomsmen are blandly forgettable; the exceptions are Moler and Chupin, who are intended to provide humor as the physically mismatched Big Sexy and T-Bone, but their banter is thoroughly uninspired, and their scenes slow things down to a crawl.  So do the flashbacks with Patric.  He brings a grizzled worldliness to the cynical character, but his monologues are incredibly boring, and his on-and-off sequence ends with a predictable thud rather than a clever twist.

But the worst of the lot is Gigandet, who struts about irritating his comrades—and us—by endlessly repeating his best man speech.  He strives to be suavely comic as he orders the others about and dances to a stream of period rock he plays on the audio system, failing miserably to generate anything but tedium over his hapless posing.  Woodward has done him absolutely no favors in giving him so much screen time, nor has editor Fady Jeanbart by letting his (presumably improvised) bits run on to such inordinate length.

On the other hand, Markos Keyto’s production design is actually quite elegant, and Pablo Diez’s widescreen cinematography is lush, with the Puerto Rico-set beach sequences especially attractive.  The bridal gown and tuxes designed by Katherine Hegarty and Tate Scofield are on the money, but Matthew Patrick Donne’s score is rendered pretty much insignificant by the use of popular songs on the soundtrack.

You’ll undoubtedly conclude that this repetitive movie, running only a few minutes under two hours, doesn’t depart the screen fast enough.