afrodome
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.
Messi Manolis
It always begins with the Wrong Gas Station. In real life, as I pointed out in my review of a previous Wrong Gas Station movie, most gas stations are clean, well-lighted places, where you can buy not only gasoline but groceries, clothes, electronic devices, Jeff Foxworthy CDs and a full line of Harley merchandise. In horror movies, however, the only gas station in the world is located on a desolate road in a godforsaken backwater. It is staffed by a degenerate who shuffles out in his coveralls and runs through a disgusting repertory of scratches, splittings, chewing, twitching and leering, while thoughtfully shifting mucus up and down his throat.The clean-cut heroes of the movie, be they a family on vacation, newlyweds, college students or backpackers, all have one thing in common. They believe everything this man tells them, especially when he suggests they turn left on the unpaved road for a shortcut. Does it ever occur to them that in this desolate wasteland with only one main road, it must be the road to stay on if they ever again want to use their cell phones?No. It does not. They take the fatal detour, and find themselves the prey of demented mutant incestuous cannibalistic gnashing slobbers, who carry pickaxes the way other people carry umbrellas. They occupy junkyards, towns made entirely of wax, nuclear waste zones and Motel Hell ("It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters"). That is the destiny that befalls a vacationing family in "The Hills Have Eyes," which is a very loose remake of Wes Craven's 1977 movie of the same name.The Carter family is on vacation. Dad (Ted Levine) is a retired detective who plans to become a security guard. Mom is sane, lovable Kathleen Quinlan. A daughter and son in law (Vinessa Shaw and Aaron Stanford) have a newborn babe. There are also two other Carter children (Dan Byrd and Emilie DE Ravin), and two dogs, named Beauty and Beast. They have hitched up an Airstream and are on a jolly family vacation through the test zones where 331 atmospheric nuclear tests took place in the 1950s and 1960s.After the Carters turn down the wrong road, they're fair game for the people who are the eyes of the hills. These are descendants of miners who refused to leave their homes when the government ordered them away from the testing grounds. They hid in mines, drank radioactive water, reproduced with their damaged DNA, and brought forth mutants, who live by eating trapped tourists. There is an old bomb crater filled with the abandoned cars and trucks of their countless victims. It is curiously touching, in the middle of this polluted wasteland, to see a car that was towing a boat that still has its outboard motor attached. No one has explained what the boat was seeking at that altitude.The plot is easily guessed. Ominous events occur. The family makes the fatal mistake of splitting up; dad walks back to the Wrong Gas Station, while the dogs bark like crazy and run away, and young Bobby chases them into the hills. Meanwhile, the mutants entertain themselves by passing in front of the camera so quickly you can't really see them, while we hear a loud sound, halfway between a swatch and a swatch, on the soundtrack. Just as a knife in a slasher movie can make a sharpening sound just because it exists, so do mutants make swatches and swatches when they run in front of cameras.I received some appalled feedback when I praised Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" (2005), but I admired two things about it: (1) It desired to entertain and not merely to sicken, and (2) its depraved killers were individuals with personalities, histories and motives. "The Hills Have Eyes" finds an intriguing setting in "typical" fake towns built by the government, populated by mannequins and intended to be destroyed by nuclear blasts. But its mutants are simply engines of destruction. There is a misshapen creature who coordinates attacks with a walkies-talkie; I would have liked to know more about him, but no luck.Nobody in this movie has ever seen a Dead Teenager Movie, and so they don't know (1) you never go off alone, (2) you especially never go off alone at night, and (3) you never follow your dog when it races off barking insanely, because you have more sense than the dog. It is also possibly not a good idea to walk back to the Wrong Gas Station to get help from the degenerate who sent you on the detour in the first place.It is not faulty logic that derails "The Hills have Eyes," however, but faulty drama. The movie is a one-trick pony. We have the eaters and the ea-tees, and they will follow their destinies until some kind of desperate denouement, possibly followed by a final shot showing that It's Not Really Over, and there will be a "The Hills Have Eyes II." Of course, there was already "The Hills Have Eyes II" (1985), but then again there was "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977) and that didn't stop them. Maybe this will. Isn't it pretty to think so.
Davis P
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.
