The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

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Horrorphile - March 2009

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

March 19th 2009 04:21

Wes Craven’s original The Hills Have Eyes (1977) was a low-budget shocker, and one of the okay movies he’s made (great title though), which isn’t saying a lot, since he’s a very over-rated director. His career consists of a couple of good movies - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1987) - a lot of mediocre movies, a handful of bad movies, and a few that were utter shite.

French director Alexandre Aja, who made the much-touted, yet over-rated Haute Tension (2003), has achieved the rare result of a remake that betters the original. The Hills Have Eyes (2006) is more intense on almost every level. One can argue the original’s low-budget production values added a sense of realism, and thus a more palpable atmosphere, but Aja’s innate sense of composition and editing which he proved in Haute Tension, are displayed with bravura in his first Hollywood movie. Curiously, Wes Craven helped produce the movie. I wonder which version he prefers?

Ted Levine as Big Bob

The plot is very simple: Big Bob Carter (Ted Levine, famous for his performance as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) and his family, including son-in-law Doug (Aaron Standford), are driving to California. There’s teenage son Bobby (Dan Byrd) and daughter Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), older daughter Lynn (Vinessa Shaw), who’s married to Doug, wife Ethel (Kathleen Quinlin), and Doug and Lynn’s baby girl Catherine.

The Bills Have Eyes (2006) Vinessa Shaw and Aaron Standford

Vinessa Shaw as Lynn and Aaron Standford as Doug

After filling up with petrol at a remote desert gas station the grizzly attendant tells them of an alternate route, which Big Bob – who just loves the open desert – immediately takes accepts. But fate intervenes with a savage twist: the tyres on the 4WD are blown when they drive over a spiked booby-trap and Bob crashes into a boulder and wreaks the axel. Thankfully the Airstream home trailer isn’t damaged so there’s shelter from the desert heat.

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) Dan Byrd and Emilie de Ravin

Dan Byrd as Bobby and Emilie de Ravin as Brenda

But the booby-trappers are watching, and they close in. First to go is one of the two family Alsatians, Beauty. They still have Beast. But there are other beasts to contend with. A whole damn family of in-bred mutants, survivors from the period between 1945 and 1962 when the American Department of Energy conducted nuclear bomb tests on a specially set-up township, without checking to see if the local miners and their families had been properly re-located. Hell hath no fury like miners scorned (see My Bloody Valentine, 1981).

Laura Ortiz as Ruby

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) Emilie de Ravin

Wake up! Time for breakfast!

Co-written between Aja and his buddy, production designer Grégory Levasseur, the screenplay follows reasonably closely to the original, although Aja’s version is a damn sight more gruesome (hats off once again to Greg Nicotero and his KNB team of special effects make-up technicians). There’s some seriously good gore in this movie: an awesome suicide by shotgun under the chin which masterfully blends between the real actor, CGI and a prosthetic head, also several good pick-axe blows, an excellent axe-severing of the fingers. The CGI is also used very cleverly to distort a few of the actors’ faces to give them a convincing deformed appearance, most notable are two mutant children and teenager Ruby (Laura Ortiz), who plays the “sympathetic” mutant (although it’s unclear why she does what she does).

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) Michael Bailey Smith

Hubba-hubba! Juicy baby for breakfast

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) Aaron Standford

Doug finds himself in a tight, stinky spot

Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith) strikes a familiar pose

During the mutant’s initial attack on the family while Big Bob is being dealt to, there is a sequence which has garnered the movie a lot of flack: the apparent rape of Brenda in the trailer home by Lizard (Robert Joy). Generally any rape scene in a movie creates a level of controversy. Rapes are still considered a taboo, or at least a delicate area for commercial cinema. In movies such as The Accused or Boys Don’t Cry it’s considered dramatically powerful, but if a rape happens in a horror movie it’s considered exploitation. I think this is bullshit. It’s all a matter of context and depiction. The rape scene in the original The Hills Have Eyes was disturbing. It’s meant to be. The terrorizing of the family is taken to the extreme; the attackers are not just looters and killers, they’re animals. In Aja’s version the rape is essentially implied. In fact if you pay attention to the scene – which is still one of the more harrowing scenes of recent horror movies – Lizard never actually manages to do anything apart from beat an hysterical Brenda with a pillow. But the intention is made clear, so the scene still has the power to shock and repulse.

Papa Jupiter (Billy Drago) gets a splitting headache

The movie’s climax in the midst of the nuclear testing village where Doug does battle with Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith in the role made famous by Michael Berryman in the original) runs the mutant’s gauntlet is great horror stuff. The whole deformed family come out to play, although Big Mama (Ivana Turchetto) appears to be only bald, and Papa Jupiter (the unctuous Billy Drago) still hiding up in the rocky hills, seems to have escaped any deformity too.

Mmmm, ear-burger, yum!

The Hills Have Eyes (the unrated U.S. DVD edition, which is justifiably given an R18 here in Australia) is not for the faint-hearted or squeamish; pet birds get their heads ripped off, a dog gets eviscerated, there’s numerous graphic head injuries, there’s cannibalism, a graphic immolation, there’s even a broken freezer chock full of body parts where a victim is held captive. Director Aja has made the kind of modern horror movie that is seldom being made these days: a relentless and brutal assault on the senses skillfully made with attention to detail. It’s all far-fetched and the ending is very French (much to Hollywood’s delight), and then there’s the last revealing shot. Avoid the dreadful sequel remake.

Have corpse, will travel

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

2 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Damo

March 19th 2009 06:24

Probably not a movie that would grip me too well.

However give me a another years of watching ER on television and I should be desensitized enough to handle it.

Comment by Bryn

March 19th 2009 23:05

Horrorphile

Damo, this one's probably a bit too visceral for your tastes.

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