A stunner of unrelenting tension interrupted by action, violence and gore.

Feature debuts don't come much better than director Robert Harmon and screenwriter Eric Red's sleek, dream-like thriller about a naïve college boy who crosses paths with devil in the flesh after taking a wrong turn on some lost highway.

There's a little toying with the old doppelgänger idea of the hero and villain coming to resemble one another, and the ending is rather straightforward; but it's a highly competent sick-fright version of the evergreen chase formula.

It's hard to wholeheartedly recommend The Hitcher. Sadistic and graphically, pointlessly violent, it may leave most sickened. But it is also a distressingly effective thriller, with plenty of scalp-tingling, seat- clutching squeals on wheels. And here's betting you'll check the back seat of your car after you leave.

Much of the problem lies with Howell, a dilute, rabbity actor in the Tim Hutton mold. Everyone acts Howell off the screen, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, who displays an easeful gruffness as the girl who joins Jim. With Howell's weightlessness, the deeper elements of the story -- the byplay between guilt and innocence, for example -- never accumulate.