About this episode

The episode critiques the film 'Riding the Bullet' for its incoherent plot and lack of narrative structure.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Stinker Madness

Topics covered

• screenplay structure
• film analysis
• horror
• psychological drama
• narrative coherence

Keywords

• Riding the Bullet
• Monster A-Go-Go
• screenplay
• film critique
• narrative
• horror
• psychological drama

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Riding the Bullet, Monster A-Go-Go

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