Based on the original film by fright master Wes Craven, The Hills Have Eyes is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carter family soon realizes the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.
Boasting an upgrade in production values, The Hills Have Eyes should please new-generation horror fans without offending devotees of Wes Craven's original version from 1977. There's still something to be said for the gritty shock value of Craven's low-budget original, made at a time when horror had been relegated to the pop-cultural ghetto, mostly below the radar of major Hollywood studios. With the box-office resurgence of horror in the new millennium--and the genre's lucrative popularity among the all-important teen demographic--it's only fitting that French director Alexandre Aja should follow up his international hit High Tension with a similarly brutal American debut to boost his Hollywood street-cred. Working with cowriter Gregory Levasseur, Aja remains surprisingly faithful to Craven's original, beginning with a bickering family that crashes their truck and trailer in the remote desert of New Mexico (actually filmed in Morocco), where they are subsequently terrorized, brutalized, and murdered by a freakish family of psychopaths, mutated by the lingering radiation from 331 nuclear bomb tests that were carried out during the 1950s and '60s. After several killings are carried out in memorably grisly fashion, it's left to the survivors to outsmart their disfigured tormentors, who are blessed with horrendous make-up (especially Robert Joy as freak leader "Lizard") but never quite as unsettling as the original film's horror icon, Michael Berryman. In Aja's hands, this newfangled Hills is all about savagery and de-evolution, reducing its characters to a state of pure, retaliatory terror. It's hardly satisfying in terms of storytelling (since there's hardly any story to tell), but as an exercise in sheer malevolence, it's undeniably effective.--Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Great horror flick!:
I've heard mixed reviews about this one, and that's what kept me from seeing it for some time. There have been a slew of old horror remakes, and many fail to live up to their originals. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the original recently enough to remember it (I was really young), but I liked this one enough to put it up as one of my favorite recent horror flicks! This wasn't a standard hack-and-slash gore fest. Gore was certainly present, but it wasn't the point of the film. This movie did a great job... more info
Another wrong turn:
All the usual ingredients are here but the recipe lacks piquancy. Aja delivers nothing that we haven't seen before and his treatment of these familiar themes isn't particularly memorable either. Having said that, there's nothing badly wrong with this movie: it delivers plenty of gore and reasonable, but not memorable, levels of tension; we have the usual two-dimensional characters who are by turns incredibly stupid and quite inventive; and we have the insanely psychopathic bad guys. The problem is that I've... more info
..and the Hill Billies Have Knives.:
Hills is a shocking and brutal thriller that occasionally comes within a stones throw of the torture-porn genre of horror (which I detest). What keeps this 'mutant-cannibal' gore-fest from slipping over the brink is the competent acting and cathartic final act. The setup is handled evenly and according to a tried and tested formula. Family takes road trip - dad takes shortcut - car dies (or is killed) - family members get disemboweled. Where Hills deviates from the formula is in its willingness to... more info
Doug The Cell Phone Clerk Turns Into Rambo And Kills Mutant Cannibals!:
Surprisingly enough, the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" is more enjoyable than the original. The overall setting and plot are very similar. A normal, lovable family is traveling through the Nevada desert. Their vehicle breaks down and they are beset upon by cannibals. However, the remake has more details (and I'm not referring to gore, although there is plenty) that make it a more realistic, faster paced thrill ride. The opening scene is both shocking and horrifying. The viewer soon realizes that this... more info
