The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Man, oh man. I remember 12 years ago when I was a horror-hound junior in High School and the trailer/website for The Hills Have Eyes remake showed up on the internet. Despite my luke-warm response to High Tension (the clunky Lions Gate released a R-Rated english dubbed version left me disappointed) I was excited to say the least. Before I start critiquing, I want to note that I do enjoy a lot of horror remakes; The Thing is arguably one of the best horror films ever made. I found The Ring superior to Ringu, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) was a surprisingly brutal & unsettling experience, The Last House On the Left (2009) shot a dose of family drama into what many were expecting to be a trope-saturated horror flick, and I Spit On Your Grave was a balls-the-wall revenge shocker with no signs of pretentious social commentary. The fact that THHE is a remake is not the problem, it's just a really bad film. The film is so paper thin. The acting is solid, if not lazy at times. The violence is rather overt with no real purpose aside from appeasing to the fans of the vapid Saw franchise. The hillbilly killers look like guys from those high production haunted hayride events; they're costumes, blatantly absurd to look like actual monsters; it feels like you're playing something out of the Mortal Konbat universe. The most 'shocking' parts are nothing other than exploitation in high contrast. The camera work/editing is similar to a heavy metal music video, and the music at one point mimics the National Anthem after an American flag gets stabbed through a skull; I mean, were they serious? Then they try to justify this whole deliberate killfest at attempting to make somencommentary on the injustice of social classes? Kill me now! Horrendous movie.

I don't really know what to say about this movie. It is one of those movies that leaves with you that sort of "could've-been-better feeling since there storylines that were a bit of-the-wall to me and which did not make sense at all. On the other hand, something I did not like about is that the characters were only played by white people which, in my opinion, would have been better if at least some of the characters had a different ethinical background.

The Hills Have Eyes is an alright horror movie. It is pretty formulaic, but even if a film is somewhat formulaic, it can be entertaining, well this movie has it's moments, but unfortunately the moments come far and few in between. The acting is suitable but everything is kind of blah. The violence is too graphic for my taste and the characters are pretty boring. Well, bobby and Doug are kinda interesting, but the rest of them just don't have enough depth. The suspense is there, although there are other scary films that have much better suspenseful scenes. If you're a horror fan, you might find some joy in this, but it's just overall not worth it if you ask me. 6/10 for The Hills Have Eyes.

A suburban family who are driving cross country run afoul of a savage mutant clan in the middle of a remote desert. Director Alexander Ahja, who also co-wrote the hard-hitting script with Gregory Levasseur, brings a fierce take-no-prisoners attitude to the harsh and gripping premise, makes fine use of the desolate desert wasteland location, generates plenty of tension, takes time to develop the characters, adeptly crafts a few eerie moments (the crater filled with abandoned automobiles and a ramshackle house that's littered with mannequins rate as especially striking and unsettling set pieces), and delivers a handy helping of unflinchingly graphic gore. The sound acting from the able cast further keeps this film on track: Aaron Stanford as the wimpy Doug, Kathleen Quinlan as the spunky Ethel, Vinessa Shaw as the sweet Lynn, Emilie de Ravin as the perky Brenda, Dan Byrd as the sullen Bobby, and Tom Bower as a grizzled gas station attendant. Moreover, the mutants are quite grotesque and frightening, with Billy Drago as vicious patriarch Papa Jupiter, Robert Joy as the brutish Lizard, and Michael Bailey Smith as hulking beast Pluto registering strongly as the definite scary stand-outs. The startling moments of go-for-the-throat unsparing violence pack a ferocious punch. Both Maxime Alexandre's sharp widescreen cinematography and the shivery score by tomandandy are up to speed. A nice'n'nasty surprise.