The Hills Have Eyes - Review

Discuss this movie on our message board!

Length: 107 min

Rated: R

Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Release Date: 2006-03-10

Starring: Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie de Ravin, Dan Byrd, Robert Joy, Ted Levine, Ezra Buzzington, Billy Drago, Laura Ortiz, Tom Bower

Directed by Alexandre Aja

Produced by Wes Craven, Peter Locke, Marianne Maddalena

Written by Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur (based on the screenplay by Wes Craven)

Visit the movie's Official Site!

Reviewed by Rafe Telsch : 2006-03-11 11:16:09

I’ve been on numerous family vacations over the years. When I was a kid (before the advent of the mobile DVD player and most hand held video games), a couple times each summer the family would load into the car and travel to a variety of vacation locales. Our challenges were fairly simple – keeping from crossing over that imaginary line into one of my sisters’ personal space, trying to find something entertaining on the road in between strong radio station signals (this was before iPods too), and maybe the occasional breakdown. Nothing we faced, not even my sister’s vengeful tactics for crossing into her space, compared to the horrors of The Hills Have Eyes, and despite my disdain for Haute Tension, I’m talking about the events within the movie, not the movie itself which, as it turns out, is a rather entertaining gorefest.

A remake of the 1970s Wes Craven film (before he rose to fame with the Freddy Krueger movies), The Hills Have Eyes takes place in an abandoned desert area of New Mexico. The Carter family, with their normal vacation squabbles including arguments between the family patriarch Bob (Ted Levine) and his son-in-law Doug (Aaron Stanford), take a wrong turn and discover just why that area of New Mexico is abandoned. The government used the area for nuclear testing decades before, testing which left mutant effects upon the people who refused to evacuate the area. The mutants ambush the Carter’s vehicle leaving the family stranded in the middle of nowhere and slowly assault the members of the family, dividing and conquering as the stupid family members dutifully play the part of typical horror movie victims, falling prey to each of the mutant’s clever schemes. It would appear the radiation affected the people’s physical traits, but left them with full mental acuity.

Director Alexandre Aja brings the same passion and vision to Hills that he brought to his first horror film, Haute Tension. Hills is incredibly gory, pushing hard on its “R” rating as spikes are driven into the heads of mutants and family members, dogs are disemboweled, parakeets become tasty beverages, and actresses Emilie de Ravin (“Lost”) and Vinessa Shaw (Melinda and Melinda) are virtually raped on screen. The movie is a visual nightmare in a good way, making even hardened horror fans turn squeamish as Aja tosses details completely in the audiences’ faces. Aja extends this method of directing to non-gory parts as well, maintaining camera shots just long enough to be awkwardly uncomfortable, and then a little bit more, on oddball characters like the mutant-affiliated gas station owner responsible for sending the family down the wrong road.

Where Hills falls down a bit is in its pacing, most of which comes from the writing, not the direction. The script (written by Aja and his Haute Tension partner Grégory Levasseur) draws out the suspense of what is attacking the Carter family for far too long, even slowing the movie back down once it has finally gotten going in an attempt to regain that suspense after the visual bloodbath. The result is a lack of suspense after the midway mark, instead making the audience shift uncomfortably in their seats waiting for the film to get moving again. Another weakness of the script is that it falls into that horror flick cliché of relying upon the stupidity of its characters to proceed, so much so that the audience starts cheering for the monsters to put the so called “heroes” of the film out of their misery.

As a second film, The Hills Have Eyes carries on the visual promise Aja showed in his first film. This is a director that isn’t afraid to push boundaries and make the most of his hard “R” ratings. I’m certain the inevitable “unrated” DVD release of Hills will have some honest merit to its unrated status, as opposed to the thirty seconds most titles tack on to use that phrase. As a scriptwriter though, Aja still has some room for improvement. It’s the pacing of the film that moves it from being a steady assault to just being moments of gore and brutality. Those moments are enough to keep me from ever wanting to go near New Mexico on a family vacation and show that Aja is the right person to try and fill Wes Craven’s shoes (his original film had its share of flaws as well but showed equal promise). However, a well-designed film, with this same level of intensity, could be something for gore-hounds and horror fans everywhere to talk about for decades to come, changing the face of the horror industry with a much-needed revolution.

Latest Movie Reviews:

Public Enemies

The Boat That Rocked (UK release)

My Sister's Keeper

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs 3D

Rafe's Must Own Movies List

Image Gallery for The Hills Have Eyes

Comment on “The Hills Have Eyes”

Note: This website is not meant for use by minors. The views expressed in the comments section below are not our own. This section is intended for discussion of the topic in the post above. Disagreement is encouraged, however comments which attack, insult, or threaten the author in a personal manner won't be published. Similarly, comments that we deem to be poorly worded, or wildly off topic will also not be approved and may be mocked. For free, uncensored, unfettered, and possibly dangerous discussion visit our forum.

Subscribe to topic comments

0 0 / 0
y n

Jon
September 18, 2007 at 12:54

AHH... The hill have eyes...... Well This review was pretty much right on as for covering the high points and structure of this movie. My only problem with this move and many others like it theses days, is this new era of super gore nonsense. The horror industry has given up on trying to create a truely scary movie, but instead they focas on creating the most realistic looking dismemberment scenes... I don't know, I used to love horror movies but now It's almost annoying trying to hold back the nausia as one after another each character has his or her entire anatomy plucked apart piece by piece. It's just getting old, besides These movies are so unrealistic in every way except for the cutting and hacking and scraping. Give me a movie where the main charecter walks in on a friend getting murdered, that charecter then turns around and runs as far away as possible, calls the cops, gets some life counciling, and then grabs a a coffee. The point of the story is.... If you are young, doing drugs, and have sex out of wedlock, you will be ripped apart, sewn back together then brutally murdered.

Reply
0 0 / 0
y n

Stephen
March 31, 2007 at 17:36

This was one of the best films ever!! i loved it but the only thing i didnt like was that the survivors of the film are not in the second film which is abit stupid so hopefully there are in the hills have eyes 3 :) if any1 know why there arnt in the second film email me plz at Stephen-m@hotmail.com thanks

Reply
0 0 / 0
y n

Brittany
July 13, 2006 at 15:58

This was the worst movie ever! I hated it it was soo wrong how the mutants raped the girls. This movie was horrifying how like everyone died and all and how just wrong and meanigless it was I DO NOT recommend this movie at all IT SUCKED!

Reply

Subscribe to topic comments

Please login or sign up to post reply

Back to The Hills Have Eyes

The Hills Have Eyes - Review

Comment on “The Hills Have Eyes”

Leave a Reply