Horrific Attempt at Horror

Rating: 1/10 (29 October 2006)

The Hills Have Eyes is yet another unnecessary horror remake that relies on shock and gore instead of true horror that comes from playing upon our fears.
Set in the barren deserts of New Mexico, a happy family is besieged by a group of individuals hideously mutated by radioactive fallout from the US Government's testing of nuclear weapons in the area roughly fifty years ago. They look terrifying, they murder and cannibalize their victims and communicate mostly in grunts. They are in fact so over the top, so hideously deformed, that there is no sense of reality to their existence. They are the monsters of this film, yet they are not frightening because they do not play upon our fears. They are so fictionalized, so distanced from our reality, that they exist outside of it and are rendered harmless to the viewers.
Watching this film I was reminded of Tobe Hooper's horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I consider to be one of the most frightening films ever made. What makes it so frightening is not the attractive teens being picked off one by one, what is frightening are that film's monsters; Leatherface and his family. They are a family, just like the family everyone has. We can instantly relate to them, which makes the fact that they are murderous cannibals truly horrifying because the film intimately drags the viewer into their world. Family is a safety zone, and to destroy such a comfort as family the way The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did is quite terrifying.
The Hills Have Eyes attempts to play up this same kind of familial terror, but fails. The family of monsters are, of course, all hideously deformed. We are given glimpses of a matronly figure, and are introduced to a giant-headed father figure who doles out the orders. Yet there is no sense that this family is connected, that they are functional, that they are even human. The viewer therefore cannot relate and therefore cannot be as terrified as the filmmaker thinks we should be.
Yet one more reason why the film fails in creating horror is that it paints the monsters as victims. In the original, the murderous mutants were simply murderous mutants, but in the remake they are victims of Big Government testing. We are shown a graveyard where the mutants laid to rest the victims of the nuclear testing, we are constantly made aware of the horrible effects the testing had on those who linger on (even getting glimpses of mutant children--not children, poor things!). If we can feel pity for the monsters in even the slightest ways, then they are no longer as monstrous and the horror is no longer as horrifying.
On to the much publicized gore of the film. The blood flows freely as a woman's organs are consumed in front of her son, a man is burned alive, fingers are chopped off and pickaxes plunge into craniums. This use of excessive gore adds nothing to the films, in fact it distracts from it. By having so much violence, so much ridiculously elaborate gore, the film creates a bloody other world for the film to exist in. The viewers are not part of this world, so they cannot be frightened by it.
In summation The Hills Have Eyes fails completely as a horror film. Its creations of monsters is over the top, as is the violence and Emilie De Ravin's American accent. At an hour and 48 minutes (unrated cut) this film is not worth your time. Rent the original or better yet rent Texas Chainsaw and see how a horror film should be made.