Maybe, maybe not...

Rating: 5/10 (14 March 2006)

Oh great. Another remake. Has Hollywood just simply given up on the fact that films will never be able to be original ever again? Or is there some kind of conspiracy or alliance with former filmmakers and Hollywood? Either way, we have another one right here, although Wes Craven seems to be more involved with this film than other directors that are having their films redone. He serves as the executive producer and was very involved in casting the actors. During the 1950's, the Neveada deserts were ground zero for nuclear testing. Everyone that lived in the dessert was forced to evacuate the area and find a new home, but the stubbornness of a small family refused to go and stayed put in the dessert mines while they become infected and mutated by the radiation poisoning in the air. Several years later, a family that is road tripping across the nation to get to San Diego, who's father rather see the dessert landscape, takes a shortcut through the dessert suggested by the owner of a small gas station in, you guessed it, the middle of nowhere. The families jeep and camper are sabotaged along the way, in which the jeep is totally demolished. Finally half way through the film when you realize that this is a horror film and not a family film, the family is soon being viciously attacked by these abnormally disfigured humans attacking anyone that ventures down their road and use human flesh as a source of food. It definitely puts a negative side on those who are less fortunate in their appearance, but evens out when a little girl of the mutated family shows concern for the baby that was kidnap and does everything she can to return the baby to the rightful owner. I love the fact that French director Alexander Ajae(High Tension) directs the film because it seems as though he was trying to poke fun of the classic American Western films by putting western music behind the hero of the film. There is also a hint that the film was showing the inhuman look of nuclear testing and the wrongs of testing in the Neveada dessert, having hearing a long speech by a helpless mutates human in a wheel chair, blaming everything on the American government. Slowly but surely the film gets it's point across, but by the time it does, I didn't really care. The gore scenes were very intense, supported by a long rape scene, and if you have seen High Tension, it's very similar. But the film didn't leave me with anything but to stay on the same road and not take any shortcuts in which will only lead to ones death.