The only way that the plot can work is if the entire movie didn't actually happen. Monster A-Go-Go, anyone?

Riding the Bullet isn't so much a movie as it is an argument against outlining your screenplay. The only way any of this can possibly make sense is if Alan climbed into his bathtub at the beginning of the film, took enough PCP to tranquilize a rhinoceros, hallucinated the next ninety minutes, eventually sobered up, got a job, lived an aggressively ordinary life, and then, decades later, turned to the camera for a Forrest Gump-style epilogue. That's the only version of events that even remotely holds together. Otherwise, you're left trying to connect scenes that appear to have been shuffled like a deck of cards before filming.

The movie lurches from supernatural horror to psychological drama to roadside ghost story without ever committing to what it's actually about. Characters drift in and out, bizarre encounters pile up without consequence, and every revelation somehow raises more questions than it answers. Rather than building mystery, it simply abandons the idea that events should have causes or effects. Watching Riding the Bullet feels less like unraveling a puzzle and more like trying to remember a dream someone else had after taking expired cold medicine.

Then comes the finale, which somehow manages to make everything even worse. Alan spends years living a completely mundane life before asking the audience, "When it's your time, will you ride the bullet?" That's... not a philosophical question. It's literally asking whether, when it's time for you to die, you'll die. Well... yes. We all will. It's not an optional side quest. The film spends nearly two hours building toward what it thinks is a profound meditation on mortality, only to land on the cinematic equivalent of asking, "When you get hungry, will you eat food?"

That may actually make Riding the Bullet unique. It's the rare rhetorical movie. Not a movie that asks rhetorical questions—a movie whose entire existence is rhetorical. It's constructed as though it's supposed to provoke an emotional response, but not one you're actually capable of having because none of it means anything. The plot doesn't exist, the message doesn't exist, and by the time the credits roll, you're left wondering if you imagined the whole thing. Frankly, that breaks my cardinal rule of movie - if you made me watch your 90+ minute boreathon and then tell me it didn't actually happen, you get 0 stars because you're not a movie. BOO!!!

The movie that sets up the great Choppers vs Trucks War of 2006.

Trucks is what happens when you take a Stephen King story about murderous vehicles, remove most of the things that made it interesting, and then somehow replace them with even more nonsense. Like Maximum Overdrive before it, this adaptation manages to botch King's source material while still producing something that is far more entertaining than it has any right to be. The central problem remains the same: they're trucks. Just run away from them. Yet Trucks compensates for its complete lack of credible tension with bizarre decisions, ridiculous characters, and enough questionable filmmaking to make it an absolute gold mine for riffing.

The movie's biggest strength is that it understands, perhaps accidentally, that watching people hide from trucks isn't particularly exciting. Instead, it keeps throwing increasingly stupid complications at the survivors while the trucks continue doing truck things. There are moments where the movie seems to forget that these are supposed to be unstoppable killing machines and instead treats them like particularly aggressive parking-lot hazards. The result is a strange mixture of horror, action, and roadside slapstick where you can spend as much time wondering what the characters are doing as you do worrying about whether they'll survive.

It doesn't quite reach the deranged heights of Maximum Overdrive, which remains in a league of its own when it comes to bizarre performances, insane choices, and general "what the hell am I watching?" energy. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Maximum Overdrive can become surprisingly tedious between its moments of glorious insanity, whereas Trucks keeps things moving and continually finds new ways to be ridiculous. It may not have a Green Goblin truck or an gatling gun vending machine, but it has its own special brand of nonsense that makes it extremely riffable. And, of course, Brenda Bakke is in it, which is always a point in its favor.

Ultimately, Trucks is a ton of fun for virtually any level of bad-movie fan. If you're looking for a faithful Stephen King adaptation, you're going to be disappointed. If you're looking for genuinely frightening killer vehicles, you're probably going to be disappointed. But if you want a cheap late-'90s made-for-TV horror movie where homicidal trucks chase people around while everyone makes questionable decisions, Trucks delivers the goods. It's not quite the same as Maximum Overdrive, but it doesn't need to be. It's goofy, dumb, surprisingly watchable, and packed with enough material to keep a group of riffers busy from beginning to end.

Gunhed is the kind of movie that makes you desperately want to love it. It has enormous robots, giant explosions, lasers everywhere, fantastic miniature work, and some genuinely impressive production design. Unfortunately, it also seems to have been edited by someone who assumed the audience had come to see a completely different movie. The result is a visually spectacular but narratively incoherent mess that frequently feels like you're watching the highlights of a much longer film.

The miniature work is easily the star of the show. The sets have a wonderfully grimy, industrial, post-apocalyptic look, and Gunhed puts a surprising amount of effort into making its futuristic world feel tangible. When the robots start stomping around and the lasers start flying, there's plenty to enjoy. This is the sort of practical-effects-heavy spectacle that makes you appreciate how much work went into building all of this stuff, even when the story surrounding it leaves you scratching your head.

Unfortunately, almost everything involving the actual plot is considerably less impressive. Characters speak in vague, cryptic dialogue, scenes seem to happen without much explanation, and the action frequently lacks any sense of spatial or narrative continuity. People run from one place to another, discover things, fight things, and then apparently forget what just happened. It's difficult to tell whether the movie is intentionally mysterious or simply assumes that explaining anything would ruin the surprise. After a while, trying to figure out what's going on becomes less intriguing and more of a chore.

And then there are the two kids, who somehow manage to make the experience even more exhausting. They're loud, irritating, and seemingly designed to test the viewer's patience at precisely the moments when the movie is already struggling to maintain momentum. Gunhed isn't a terrible movie so much as a frustrating one: there's clearly a lot of talent and effort on display, but it's buried beneath a story that's nearly impossible to follow. The production design, miniatures, robots, lasers, and explosions make it worth seeing for the bad-movie enthusiast, but there's just not enough coherent movie underneath all that spectacle to make it genuinely fun. A lukewarm recommendation for effects fans, and a pretty hard pass for everyone else.