The Hills Have Eyes (2006) (Widescreen Unrated Edition)

I don't claim to be an expert about producers, directors, movies, and which remake is better than what remake. I just know I like horror--the new, more realistic kind AND the old cult classic kind--with all the accompanying gore common to this genre.

This movie has enough gore to satisfy even the most hard-core horror addict, but if you're at all queasy, this movie is not for you. But I loved it. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time; it was THAT exciting. The mutant, deformed killers, a product of government bomb-testing in the New Mexico desert, were masterpieces of make-up artistry ... what real monsters are supposed to look like. Terrifying.

The poor family who gets stranded in the desert are terrorized by these monsters, but they muster their survival skills and stand up to their attackers in true "movie hero" fashion.

Do they all survive? Of course not; this is horror, after all, and the more victims the better ...the more blood and guts the better.

The actors were well-suited for the roles they played, but I felt let-down by the non-closure at the ending. Then when I learned there would be a sequel ... well, that explained it. I can live with that.

This movie was filmed in 2006, and I saw it for the first time last night (on DVD). I told my son what I was watching and he told me the sequel is even better. I plan to run to the video store and enjoy back-to-back HILLS ... with a huge bowl of buttered pop-corn.

Anyone wish to join me?

Do you enjoy watching a typical family being hunted down, killed, and at least partially eaten? Does your heart go all a-flutter at the sight of a giant axe being buried in someone's head? Do you get weak in the knees when some horribly mutated human monster flashes his viscous orbital sockets at you? Do you wake up each and every morning chanting Gore Gore Gore? If you answered Yes to any of these questions, you'll take evil delight in this remake of Wes Craven's classic The Hills Have Eyes.

I have to admit that, at least for me, the shine of these mutant-led massacre films has pretty much worn off. There's really nothing new here at all. It's really just a question of how gory the director will make it. It's not like the film is going to draw you into a juicy story, as that story consists of nothing more than a family being thrown out in the desert on some pretense and having to fight for their lives against mutant freaks. There isn't even any mystery as to who the monsters are or how they got that way, as that's made pretty clear from the very start.

As for all the gore, it's really quite exceptional, especially in this uncut version. When a guy blows his head off with a shotgun, he really blows his head off with a shotgun. All of the bullets that hit their mark do all kinds of damage. Still, there's really nothing like a good axe blow to the skull, and the director seems to really get off on that sort of thing as he gives us plenty of it. I could complain about the whole lack of brain oozing in conjunction with all the Bunyan Blues being whacked out, but at least there's plenty of blood. While this isn't the goriest movie I've ever seen -- not even close, really ' it's definitely up there in the upper echelon of gruesome motion pictures. The special effects aim high and hit the mark, as well; the mutated human degenerates cover a wide spectrum of radiation-induced ooziness, deformity, and general ugliness.

The cast is quite good, as well. Lost's Emilie De Ravin, who must by now have trouble convincing anyone to take even a short trip with her anywhere, is the most familiar face in the bunch -- her screaming could use a little work, but she may have just found herself all screamed out after all the indignities and suffering she had to endure over the course of this film. Aaron Stanford successfully moves beyond his general dweebiness to make a man out of his less than macho character, while young Bobby (Dan Byrd) never lets himself fall prey to the stereotype of the teenaged hero wannabe.

If you're going to make a completely unnecessary remake, you'd better do it right ' and that is just what happened here. Just take a look at some of the critical reviews, decrying the bloodlust fueling such degenerate movies as this, even going as far as to call the moviemakers "ghouls" feeding on the blood money of viewers who will supposedly go out and do violent things to one another after the end credits roll. As for reports of some viewers walking out on the film due to the level of violence ' I don't get that at all. Uh, did they walk into the wrong cinema or something? It's not like The Hills Have Eyes was advertised as some sweeping romantic epic. And I just don't think there's an outrageous level of violence here in the first place. We spend a lot of time with an annoying family before the fun even begins. And the rape scene? Extremely tame, so much so that I wasn't completely sure it was actually a rape scene. I also thought the director held back quite a bit on the whole cannibalism thing. Really, as a hardcore horror fan, I find it amusing that some people consider this a shocking, ultra-violent film. Those folks really don't know what they're missing.

In the tragedies of ancient Greece the "harmartia" of the tragic hero usually involved an act of "hubris," to show that once again pride goeth before the fall. But the key part of the hero's tragic flow was that they had to be culpable in their own downfall, so that they were never the innocent victims of his fate. There is something at work in horror films, especially of the splatter flick variety, in which the victims have to do something that dooms them to being sliced, diced and whatever the psychopaths that await them want to do to them. In these films it is never pride that dooms them, but rather stupidity, often on a level of such sheer unbelievably that its only function is for you to want these people to die because they are literally too stupid to live. For me the epitome of this in films of recent vintage was the remake of "House of Wax," where Jared Padelicki's character sets a record for going into the wrong places time and time again until something really horrible happens to him.

"The Hills Have Eyes" starts off in a similar vein. If you are driving across the Nevada desert and you stop at a gas station that is so old and decrepit that it must have been ten years since (a) they cleaned the place and (b) received a shipment of gas, and if the old coot (Tom Bower) that runs the place tells you there is a short cut to your destination, then how stupid do you have to be to take his advice? Just to make things clear, you choice is between THE ONLY PAVED ROAD IN SIGHT and a dirt road that leads off into the hills. To add insult to injury, the person making this decision, the father of this doomed little nuclear family happens to be an ex-cop. The bad news is that he should know better, but the good news is that he has a gun. Not that it will do him any god.

The dirt road is a trap. A car is never going to make it all the way down the road, which leads to a faux town that was built by the U.S. military to test what happens to buildings (and manikins) when exposed to one of the 300-plus nuclear blasts set off in the area. The town was out of the blast radius, but not out of the range of the nuclear radiation. So was the mining camp whose occupants refused to leave just because the government was setting off atomic bombs for several years. Their descendants, a group of mutated and probably incestuous cannibals, are looking forward to their next meals. That would be the family of Big Bob Carter (Ted Levine), his wife Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), teenage son Bobby (Dan Byrd), youngest daughter Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), oldest daughter Lynn (Vinessa Shaw), her husband Doug (Aaron Stanford), and their baby Catharine (Maisie Camilleri Preziosi).

The real nuclear family of this film consists of Papa Jupiter (Billy Drago), Big mama (Ivana Turchetto), Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith), Lizard (Robert Joy), Ruby (Laura Ortiz), Goggle (Ezra Buzzington), and Big Brain (Desmond Askew). There are a couple of kids, the next generation of mutant cannibals as it were, but they do not take part in the festivities. Having arranged for the Carters to be stuck in the desert, they wait for their victims to start going for help so they can be picked off one by one. No matter what direction you go in these hills, you are doomed. Doomed, do you hear me? Doomed! The only problem is that there is a baby involved, and why the guy stupid enough to drive down the dirt road might deserve this and the girls sunbathing themselves are inviting disaster, the same cannot be said for an innocent little baby.

The most interesting thing about this movie is that over ninety percent of it takes place during the daytime, usually in the brightness of the desert sun. Splatter flicks usually take place in the dark, but this is a movie that wants you to see what is going on most of time. Director Alexandre Aja ("Haute tension") and his constant co-writer Gregory Levasseur, take the original 1977 screenplay by Wes Craven and run with it. Things are a bit slow at first, mainly because as long as the sun is up you can see the monsters are not out there waiting, while in the darkness it is much easier to imagine. Once the blood and gore start being spilled things pick up and there are enough set pieces to whet your appetite, but I will fully admit that I rounded up on this one because the hero ends up being the character that is most like me (to wit, the one who really should have been the first to die). I also appreciate that he follows my long held personal advice for people in such situations, which is to use any and all objects, both blunt and sharp, to kill the monsters and to never, ever think that one blow might be sufficient. Finally, the film has a very appropriate final shot for the inevitable "it is not really over" bit that always comes at the end of splatter flicks.