The Hills Have Eyes (Unrated Edition)
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
Rating : 3.5
Reviews : 283
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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
5 Comments
Fairly simple premise executed impeccably. Edge of seat excitement/suspense. I actually liked this version better than the original. Forget about THHE 2 and stick with this classic.
If you enjoy slasher flicks, this remake is a five-star horror movie, in my opinion. The death scenes are brutal, the pacing is relentless, the sense of doom and carnage is overwhelming, the gore is palpable.
If you enjoy a movie that tells a compelling story, however, this is a 0 stars movie.
Since my rating of three stars.
The remake of Wes Craven’s classic, The Hills Have Eyes (2006), follows a familiar formula, where a family is attacked by a group of cannibalistic genetic freaks, while travelling through the rocky, arid, landscapes of New Mexico. Heading the production is the team responsible for High Tension (2003), and Mirrors (2008), French director/writer Alexandre Aja (Mirrors), and writer Gregory Levasseur. Wes Craven, serves as a co-producer for the project.
In an SUV towing a mobile home, the Carter family is California bound, when they stop to refuel at a rundown gas station. Taking a tip from the station owner, the group takes a short cut, and end up crashing their vehicle in the middle of nowhere. Head of the family Big Bob (Ted Levine), an ex-cop (and bad driver), heads off to the service station for help, while prissy son-in-law Doug (Aaron Staford), heads up the road to look for help. Doug finds a crater, with abandoned cars scattered around, but no way out. As darkness falls, bad things begin to happen.
The Carter family’s reactions seem pretty normal, and they are extremely inept throughout. Panic can prevent the mind from thinking clearly, and that seems to be the case here, as almost everything they do is a disaster. Big Bob, the experienced cop, shoots wildly at nothing, and ends up attending a barbecue. Big Bob leaves teenage son Bobby (Dan Byrd), with a gun, but the situation is too much for him to deal with, he can’t shoot straight, and just makes blunder after blunder. Unfortunately the women (Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, and Emilie de Ravin) do not fare well at all, at the hands of the freaks. Doug is resolved to take action, when his baby daughter Catherine is kidnapped. The family dogs, Beauty and Beast, are always breaking loose, but fortunately Beast is the first one in the Carter clan prepared to kill, to defend the family.
The genetic mutants, products of exposure to radioactivity, are quite grotesque, and unique looking monsters (Big Brain, Lizard, Papa Jupiter and Goggle). Fortunately, they are not very bright. The buildup takes a while, but Hills delivers some powerful shocks and gore, with some memorable axe wielding violence, bird blood sipping, human torch action, and threatening of an infant at gunpoint.
The DVD has some nice extras including ‘Surviving the Hills’, a 50 minute making of documentary, production diaries, and two commentary tracks. One by Aja, Levasseur, and producer Marianne Maddalena, mainly focuses on the production of the film, while the second commentary by producers Wes Craven and Peter Locke, is humorously all over the place, between the original 1977 film, and the remake.
Filmed in various locations including Morocco, the finished version of film fits together pretty well, and features some cool cinematography. The complete ineptness of the Carter family makes it makes it hard to get on their side at first, but things do turn around, as Doug and Beast take the fight to the mutants. The hard hitting remake of The Hills Have Eyes, is recommended to fans of the original, as well as to gorehounds in general.
To all you reviewers who didn’t like this movie because it was “shocking and disturbing”: BOO!
You’re the reason why we have all this predictable, the good character always lives, the antagonist has an alterior motive besides plain evil, we must kill off one person of the group at a time, the protagonist has to uncover the “mystery”, horror movie garbage that floods theaters every year. Don’t you ever get tired of that crap? Don’t you understand? You were disturbed because it was THAT good! Horror movies are SUPPOSED to be disturbing remember? The stuff you’ve been watching lately are gory action flicks.
This movie is not as bad as people make it out to be.Horror fans and people who enjoy seeing LOTS of blood/gore in horror will enjoy this movie ALOT.the plot was interesting,acting wasnt bad at all and the effects on the “mutant” were very good.There was one scene almost in the begining involving a girl and a “mutant” in a trailer raping her that some people will have a hard time watching but i think it adds to the horrific nature of the hills and the desparete struggle for the people to survive.Horror/gore fans give this one a try you will NOT be disapointed,i have myself seen this movie several times and always find it a good watch on a dark,stormy night.