Released: March 2007
Director: Martin Weisz
Rated R
Run Time: 89
Distributor: Fox Atomic
Genre: Horror
Cast:
Michael Bailey Smith: Papa Hades
Michael McMillian: Napoleon
Daniella Alonso: Missy
Jacob Vargas: Crank
Flex Alexander: Sarge
Jessica Stroup: Amber
When Wes Craven unleashed the original The Hills Have Eyes back in 1977, it sent shock waves throughout the genre. The film’s unrelenting grittiness helped solidify Wes Craven as the next master of horror. The film was regarded by fans of the genre as one of the best and brutal horror movies of the 70s. In 2006, Alexandre Aja in conjunction with Wes Craven, released a remake of Craven’s film. Not only did the film one-up the original in nearly every single way, 2006’s The Hills Have Eyes was elegant proof that horror movie remakes can be awesome. However, when someone tries to follow-up a successful horror film with a sequel, it doesn’t always work. Wes Craven released the original The Hills Have Eyes Part II back in 1985 and it was poorly received, shall we say. Due to the success of the 2006 film, Wes Craven and company decided it would be a good idea to craft a sequel. Just so everybody is aware, the 2007 The Hills Have Eyes 2 is not a remake of the the 1985 film. No, the 2007 Hills is a sequel to the 2006 movie. So, is The Hills Have Eyes 2 a worthy follow-up to Alexandre Aja’s film? Short answer: Not even close.
The survivors of the first film have alerted the authorities and military to the fact that there are mutated people living in the wastelands of the New Mexico desert, and the Army began to bomb these freaks out of existence. Some have survived and are hiding in the mines. Essentially, the film really begins with a group of Army trainees on a training exercise that they hilariously fail, and are sent by military command to somewhere else. On the way, they have to deliver equipment to a group of scientists in secret location called Sector 16. Upon arriving, they discover that the camp has been abandoned. Searching the bunker and the surrounding environment, the group soon realizes that they are not alone. The setup is not the worst thing in the world, and using the military would have been very interesting, if it was handled by better film-makers. The story is basically a reason to see these guys get killed or worse. In fact, one of the aspects of the story is that because the mutant population is dwindling, the mutants kidnap women to breed and rebuild their numbers while slaughtering the men. Again, it’s an aspect that could really amp up the horror of the film. Unfortunately, it’s never truly realized as the film’s writing is fucking awful. What makes the writing and script worse, is that it was written by Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan. It’s a HUGE step backwards. The first film was fairly well-received in the horror community, but this…..this is dreadful.
The bad writing permeates pretty much everything else about the film, the characters in particular. Oh, my god, the characters in this movie are TERRIBLE. There is not a single likable soul among these characters. Every single one of them is an absolute disgrace. These characters are supposed in the Army, but apparently they skipped Basic Training. I read somewhere that the film-makers behind this….”film” had absolute respect for the military. Really? Then, why are these characters so….STUPID?! They go from making one stupid mistake to another, and I guess somebody thought that this was good character development. WRONG. You can’t connect with these characters, because they are so annoying. One of them is a peace-loving nimrod named Napoleon and you have a short-fused dingbat named Crank. The mutants also get shafted. Their only purpose in the film is to kill the men and kidnap and rape the women. That is the crux of their motivation. That’s not good enough. In the first film, you find out why the mutants do what they do. It doesn’t make them any more likable, but they have motivation, and it makes them more terrifying. Here….I’m sorry, not even Michael Bailey Smith as Papa Hades could salvage this.
Effects-wise, we can tell that KNB had some hand in this, but it is NOT their best effort, I can tell you that right now. There are moments of some really gruesome effects. The opening scene in which a pregnant women gives birth to a mutant baby is suitably disgusting and shown in detail. But there really isn’t a whole let else that matches that. There is definitely blood and gore here, but the way that it’s done is surprisingly bad. There is definitely CGI being used in some of these sequences and the green-screen effects are painfully obvious, especially when some of the soldiers fall off a cliff. The make-up on the mutants isn’t awful, but it’s nowhere near as varied as the previous film. They all look the same here.
Is the film boring, though? No. It does move at a pretty good clip, and the kills come quickly and violently. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to save a film that was half-baked from the beginning. The director, Martin Weisz, was clearly out of his element here, and his filmography on IMDB indicates that he hasn’t done anything worthwhile since. Most of the actors are forgettable, with the exception of Daniella Alonso. This could have been a decent outing if Wes and Jonathan Craven had spent more than a month writing the script. I’m not kidding, they wrote the script in a month, and it clearly shows. I forget who said it, but somebody once said that you can make a bad movie out of a good script, but you can’t make a good movie out of a bad script. The script for The Hills Have Eyes 2 was very bad. The film, like any other bad movie, has its moments, but unlike the first movie, it doesn’t have a whole to say. As said in my The Hills Have Eyes review, the most effective horror movies are where you connect with the characters. Craven simply didn’t do that here. As a result, it’s a movie that I can safely say that you can skip, and you won’t be any worse off.
My Final Recommendation: Run to the hills! Run for your lives! 5/10