THE HILLS HAVE EYES
Directed by: Alexandre Aja. Written by: Alexandre Aja & Gregory Levasseur.
Produced by: Wes Craven, Marianne Maddalena & Peter Locke.
Director of Photography: Maxime Alexandre, A.I.C.
Edited by: Baxter.
Music by: Tomandandy.
Released by: Fox Searchlight.
Country of Origin: USA. 105 min. Rated: R.
With: Aaron Stratford, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie de Ravin, Dan Byrd, Tom Bower, Billy Drago, Robert Joy & Ted Levine.

There’s a couple of different ways to look at this film. Certainly, it’s a successful remake. The 1977 cult classic about a vacationing suburban family taking a shortcut through the dusty American wasteland and finding themselves picked off by inbred cannibal mutants is now as much about the mutants as the family they terrorize. Whatever was left to imagination in the original is dragged into full horrific light when we see the mutants’ decaying village and hear how the government could not quite evacuate their community of poor, proud miners before nuclear testing began. With original director Wes Craven overseeing Alexandre Aja’s production, this feels more like a belated, well-planned revision than a remake.

And as a horror flick, it hits all the technical marks on the checklist: all-out gore, good acting as a rule, and enough indistinct figures skittering across the screen to make you jump at least once. While we see only a tiny bit of cannibalism, something that was only alluded to in the original, this is a gore-fest to rival Takashi Miike’s Audition and somewhere out there, Quentin Tarantino is probably watching this and saying, “Cool.” The infamous infant kidnapping scene from the original is elaborated into one of the film’s most gratuitous sequences, featuring matricide, a burning crucifix, and a double rape. (By the way, it was nice of the mutant holding the baby to set it down carefully after its mother suddenly stabbed him. Cannibals are nothing if not considerate.) So if this breed of exceedingly campy death scenes appeals to you, the movie ticket will give you your money’s worth.

Yet, it feels a little tired. The original’s famed subversive social commentary on civilization versus barbarism is more developed, but even with the film's mixture of mannequins, mutants, and one spectacular death via the American flag, the remake doesn’t have much more to say than the original. And by the last half hour – 30 minutes of clichés that actually end with hugging and someone saying, “Let’s get out of here,” – the film loses steam and derails into gore for gore’s sake. The mutant’s look better than they did before, but they’re still the same one-dimensional mutants. It’s great as a remake and pretty good as horror films go. But as a whole, it’s not a full meal. Zachary Jones
March 10, 2006