User Reviews

Here we have a 12-minute short film written and directed by Ivar Leon Menger over 10 years ago. The cast is very good. Justus von Dohnányi should be known to anybody with a little bit of interest in German television. Busch and Dierkes both have prolific bodies of work too and also appeared in a couple films well-known abroad. A young man hears about an escaped psychopath and how the police advices not to take any hitchhikers. Then the camera moves to von Dohnányi and we see that he already picked one up. The hitchhiker acts also pretty strangely so that we are supposed to think he must be the evil man. It's all a tad too obvious though and if you have seen the directors other famous short film "Geteiltes Leid" (with Florian Lukas), you know he has a tendency for last-minute plot twists. My guess was that the young seemingly harmless driver was actually the escapee and stole the car somewhere. But in the end they run into a police patrol, so we are finally about to find out who really is the evil guy of if he even appears in this movie. Good effort here, very tense and entertaining little thriller movie and in my opinion absolutely superior to "Geteiltes Leid" (nice mention by the way by von Dohnányi). Recommended and after this watch I hope Menger will make a feature film one day.

This German short film was originally called TRAMPER with an English title of HITCHHIKER. The director is one Ivar Leon Menger, who tells the story of a young student driving home one night who hears that a psychopath has escaped from a local asylum (I know, that old chestnut). The problem for him is that he's just picked up a hitchhiker...

This short film, which was initially widely available on the Internet after release, clocks in at just 14 minutes, so the clichéd story of the mad hitchhiker never has time to get boring. Very well shot (as are most modern shorts), it basically offers a simple two-handed conversation between an innocent student and a guy who may or may not be a killer. The script is strong and the performances are fine, especially from Von Dohnanyi as the weirdo hitch-hiker. Best of all is the twist ending, which manages to throw a fresh spin on what is otherwise a very old story.