The Hills Have Eyes is a remake of the 1977 Wes Craven film of the same name. For a long time, America tested atomic weapons in the desert without people knowing. They ended the practice in 1965 and 40 years later, the Carter family has the misfortune of seeing the results of what four decades of radiation does to a group of miners who refused to leave their caves. Mom and Dad Carter, their son Bobby and their daughters Brenda and Lynne, including her husband Doug and their newborn baby Catherine are traveling across the great American desert to San Diego, where Dad Carter is opening his own security firm after retiring from police work. But their back story is unimportant; what matters is they are in the wrong place at the wrong time, their truck crashes off the road, and that's when the movie starts what it intended from the beginning: the slow torture and murder of the entire Carter family.
Despite what anyone tells you, The Hills Have Eyes is not a horror movie. It's another movie in an ongoing trend of torture films, such as Wolf Creek, Hostel and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They don't so much scare you, as make you endure a group of people, likable or not, go through excruciating torture, both mental and physical. There are few redeeming characteristics of watching a mainstream snuff film, but this movie does have a few. For example, unlike Wolf Creek, you can root for Doug as he tries to get his baby back. Unfortunately, there are many other similarities between this movie and previous films.
The Hills Have Eyes falls back on too many horror cliche's. My least favorite: a camera shot from behind a character and in the foreground, one of the radioactive freaks slides by, the music jars you awake, and the character turns around. Now, the only reason he (or she) could've turned around was because he heard the music. I have no other explanation as to why he (or she) would've turned around. Sure, it provides some tension, but for the most part it serves as an annoyance. Another and perhaps worse cliche: the false ending. Doug appears to be more intelligent than most regular horror movie folk, but sure enough, he leaves someone for dead and conveniently gives them a weapon, only to have it turned against him by the supposedly dead enemy.
As I said before, The Hills Have Eyes is a remake of a 70s horror movie. It's interesting to note that this recent spate of torture movies has a distinct similarity to the spate of torture movies that arrived in the 70s. They try to push the envelope as much as possible; most of them to the detriment of the film. Granted, I think that most of the 70s torture films were much better than the current movies, but I'm not a big fan of remakes in general. If you like seeing innocent people being raped and murdered, then by all means, this movie is for you. It's a little harsh to think of the movie that way, but when it comes down to it, that's what this movie is: a grotesque mix of gore and violence.
All of that being said, the movie isn't awful. You do feel better when the tattered remnants of the family start to fight back. My favorite character was the German Shepherd, Beast, of the family's dog duo, Beauty and Beast. Beast was a tad more intelligent than most of the characters in the movie, and had the smarts to prove that in any movie, horror or otherwise, a good offense is the best defense.
"The Hills Have Eyes" opens March 10, 2006 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Alexandre Aja. Written by Alexandre Aja, Wes Craven. Starring Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie De Ravin.
