The hills are alive

Review by Vives Anunciacion

The Hills Have Eyes
Directed by Alexandre Aja
Written by Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur
Starring Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Emilie de Ravin
R18/ 107minutes
20th Century Fox

Here’s a dare for horror movie regulars who think they’ve seen them all: try to see The Hills Have Eyes all by yourself. Or simply try not to cover your eyes and actually watch this remake of horror master Wes Craven’s 1977 classic. It has the ingredients to scare people out of their skins.

There’s a recent epidemic of extreme violence in movies, especially horror movies which have no choice but to explore the unspeakable lurking in the darkest corners of our collective imagination. Hostel had its victims’ fingers cut off by pliers. In Venom, the killer’s favorite weapon of human destruction was a crowbar. In The Hills Have Eyes, a family traveling through the dusty New Mexican desert is terrorized by sadistic, bloodthirsty creatures, who turn out to be the mutant victims of WW2 nuclear warhead tests. They eat humans.

French director Alexandre Aja reanimates the 1977 cult classic for the trendy call-center generation with complete disregard for what manner of sadism the audience can stomach, nor for the oft-required “characterization.”

The title credits explain the existence of the mutants in the radioactive regions of New Mexican desert. In the short time before the Carter family is introduced, the audience is given an initial taste of how the mutants deal with outsiders, and so the horror is planted even before the main dish is severed, er, served.

When the Carters do appear, they make a pit stop on the lone gas station in the desert. Big Bob (Ted Levine) and Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), recently-married eldest daughter Lynn (Vanessa Shaw) plus her new husband Doug (Aaron Stanford) with their baby Catherine, the teenage siblings Brenda (Emilie de Ravin) and Bobby (Dan Byrd), plus the two German Shepherds Beauty and Beast – are traveling through the desert on their way to California, where Bob and Ethel intend to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. They are a picture of the average suburban conservative family.

As they whine and whimper about the desert heat, the old, hillbilly gas station attendant suggests to Bob a shortcut through the hills. Bob, uncharacteristically the former police detective that he proclaims he is, accepts the attendant’s suggestion and takes the “alternate” route. In a few minutes, their truck and trailer would crash into the dirt, stranding the entire family in the middle of nowhere.

That’s when the jumping-in-your-seats start. Big Bob decides to walk back to the gas station to get help, while Doug investigates what is further down the road, leaving Ethel, the kids and the baby at the mercy of desert sunset. For protection, Big Bob and Bobby each have hand guns. Doug doesn’t believe in using one. And then the mutants appear, thirsty for the blood and guts of normal humans who have conducted the nuclear tests that deformed them and their parents. What ensues is plain shocking madness. But it does have a happy Hollywood ending.

The Hills Have Eyes is short on narrative arch – it is after all a standard horror movie, which means most of the time it’s the ususal cat and mouse chase between killer and victim. It’s the times when the cat catches the mouse which will make you squirm in your seat, even for the most seasoned horror fan. The blood and gore in The Hills Have Eyes can be very nasty at times.

Good performances from the cast, especially from Stanford and Shaw and the main mutant Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith), great sepia look and mood from cinematographer Maxime Alexadre add to the effective narrative preparation and suspense build-up, but it remains a standard horror flick which improves on the original only in production value. At the end of the show, the survivors are exhausted, and so is the audience. Which means the pay-off is rewarding.

The original The Hills Have Eyes was an artistic and commercial success in the 70s because it visualized the innate fear of the strange, at height of the US-Russian Cold War. The horror in the new The Hills Have Eyes still works because it taps into the current age of terror, especially when the unknowns are lurking just beyond the hills.