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Review: 'Hills Have Eyes' Bloody, Boring Remake
POSTED: 8:14 am CST March 10, 2006
'The Hills Have Eyes' (R) 
(out of four)To some degree a depraved variation on "Syriana," swapping out America's mutating thirst for oil with a mutant's thirst for blood, "The Hills Have Eyes" is a tacky B-horror film with the bad taste of posing as a story of more serious social conviction.Yes, it pretends to about something greater, but make no mistake: This is purely a blood-and-guts affair. And no matter how much it pretends to have a deeper message, nothing can mask the fact that there is a whole lot of mindless, disgusting stuff going on here.I came out as a defender of director Alexandre Aja's "High Tension" (2003) for its effective and creepy mental games. But while there are a few subdued scares in "Hills," scares that occur more imaginatively in our mind's eye, the entire second hour of this slaughter is right there in oozing, dripping detail.The short version of this story is that a family of tourists lost in the desert encounter mutants. The long version is a bit more complicated, but no less banal. Bumbling through the barren deserts of the southwest, the Carter family is oblivious in their arrogance.They pull up to a gas station, fill up while Doug (Aaron Stanford) checks for cell phone reception and Bob (Ted Levine), Doug's father-in-law, fills up the SUV and reminisces about the army.In minutes, they return to the road, take a short cut and break down in the middle of nowhere. In one perfect sequence, as Doug breaks out the guns, Aja pulls the camera back and shows them for what they are -- naïve specks in a sea of nothingness. A recurring theme of recent horror films, the Carters are stranded outside the comforts of technology or civilization, finally put back in their place in nature's pecking order. And as Doug and Bob leave the group to go find help, the rest remain at their new campground, setting up a picnic table and tanning in the sun.What they don't know is that these parts were once the testing ground for nuclear weapons, and when the native residents refused to leave, it also become a graveyard. Those who survived the tests have been horribly disfigured and mutated .Based on the 1977 Wes Craven film that, due to budget constraints, was delightfully inventive and psychological, this remake is the juiced -up version of a film that was good precisely because it couldn't afford the juice.Though Aja does capture one scene of unspeakable terror. Precisely at the midpoint between a film about isolationist dread and a film about blood-pumping action is a scene so perverse and profane that it actually manages to shock the fans of the desensitized horror genre.As the family's dogs go missing in the night, and as family members think they see someone moving out in the distance, a diversion distracts the men while a band of mutants jump into the trailer and hold two women and a baby hostage. And for just a moment, before the allure of the unknown is replaced by methodical chases and tiresome confrontations, hell seems to rain down on this unsuspecting family, violating them in unthinkable ways.Part of "Hills," just like "Syriana," pretends to be about how everything's connected, about how the Carters are paying the price for the mistakes America made decades ago. But that subplot is never fully developed and as Doug heroically sets out to rescue his baby girl, kidnapped somewhere out there in the great beyond, Aja betrays this theme of penance and persecution.What starts as a sparse and delicious nightmare ends as an overdone rehashing of a mindlessly bloody, and boring, horror formula.
(out of four)To some degree a depraved variation on "Syriana," swapping out America's mutating thirst for oil with a mutant's thirst for blood, "The Hills Have Eyes" is a tacky B-horror film with the bad taste of posing as a story of more serious social conviction.Yes, it pretends to about something greater, but make no mistake: This is purely a blood-and-guts affair. And no matter how much it pretends to have a deeper message, nothing can mask the fact that there is a whole lot of mindless, disgusting stuff going on here.I came out as a defender of director Alexandre Aja's "High Tension" (2003) for its effective and creepy mental games. But while there are a few subdued scares in "Hills," scares that occur more imaginatively in our mind's eye, the entire second hour of this slaughter is right there in oozing, dripping detail.The short version of this story is that a family of tourists lost in the desert encounter mutants. The long version is a bit more complicated, but no less banal. Bumbling through the barren deserts of the southwest, the Carter family is oblivious in their arrogance.They pull up to a gas station, fill up while Doug (Aaron Stanford) checks for cell phone reception and Bob (Ted Levine), Doug's father-in-law, fills up the SUV and reminisces about the army.In minutes, they return to the road, take a short cut and break down in the middle of nowhere. In one perfect sequence, as Doug breaks out the guns, Aja pulls the camera back and shows them for what they are -- naïve specks in a sea of nothingness. A recurring theme of recent horror films, the Carters are stranded outside the comforts of technology or civilization, finally put back in their place in nature's pecking order. And as Doug and Bob leave the group to go find help, the rest remain at their new campground, setting up a picnic table and tanning in the sun.What they don't know is that these parts were once the testing ground for nuclear weapons, and when the native residents refused to leave, it also become a graveyard. Those who survived the tests have been horribly disfigured and mutated .Based on the 1977 Wes Craven film that, due to budget constraints, was delightfully inventive and psychological, this remake is the juiced -up version of a film that was good precisely because it couldn't afford the juice.Though Aja does capture one scene of unspeakable terror. Precisely at the midpoint between a film about isolationist dread and a film about blood-pumping action is a scene so perverse and profane that it actually manages to shock the fans of the desensitized horror genre.As the family's dogs go missing in the night, and as family members think they see someone moving out in the distance, a diversion distracts the men while a band of mutants jump into the trailer and hold two women and a baby hostage. And for just a moment, before the allure of the unknown is replaced by methodical chases and tiresome confrontations, hell seems to rain down on this unsuspecting family, violating them in unthinkable ways.Part of "Hills," just like "Syriana," pretends to be about how everything's connected, about how the Carters are paying the price for the mistakes America made decades ago. But that subplot is never fully developed and as Doug heroically sets out to rescue his baby girl, kidnapped somewhere out there in the great beyond, Aja betrays this theme of penance and persecution.What starts as a sparse and delicious nightmare ends as an overdone rehashing of a mindlessly bloody, and boring, horror formula.Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
