A High-Tension Nuclear Family...

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2006)

Welcome back, horror! How I've missed you all these years...
"The Hills Have Eyes" is yet another remake of a beloved (but not by me) '70s horror film that springs largely from Hollywood's ongoing lack of creativity. Most recent remakes have either been exceptional, but not on par with the original ("Dawn of the Dead"); just slightly better than the awful original ("The Amityville Horror"); or simply rock-bottom awful in comparison to the original ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"; "Assault on Precinct 13").
Wes Craven's original "Hills" was a 1977 production about a family who becomes stranded in the Arizona desert after their truck (complete with trailer) gets a flat. Far from a telephone or any other people, they stick out the night, only to be besieged by a family of cannibals living in the hills. While a low-budget production (popularized by the signature image of Michael Berryman's malformed head), Craven's film had a grittiness and brutality to it that adhered close to his previous film, "Last House on the Left." However, what sunk the original "Hills" for me was its lack of urgency and languid pace...that, and the cannibals themselves looked sillier and sillier the more they were shown. On the IMDb's scale of 1 to 10, I would have given the original a 4.
This redux, brought to us by the talented Frenchmen who gave us "High Tension" (Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur), is not only a marked improvement over Craven's original, but one of the best horror films to come along in quite some time. As with "Tension," Aja shows a clear skill in building atmosphere and suspense that frequently culminates in chest-tightening terror; the makeup is superbly grotesque and convincing; also present is the creative extremes of bloodletting that marked their previous effort. The politics of Craven's original remains intact, with unlikely heroes being reduced to acts of savagery, but the dynamic of the mutants has been made more ambiguous--instead of a close-knit family of savages, Aja's monsters don't seem as strongly linked; they are instead scattered across the desert like scorpions, which makes their menace a lot more effective. The scenes in the original that focused on the cannibals in their habitat often ventured into camp; in the remake, the relationships are there, but not explored in as explicit of detail, which works better, actually.
"Hills 2006," save for a few divergent touches, remains structurally similar to the '77 version. A toothless gas station attendant (Tom Bower, hamming it up) directs the wayward Carver clan (including Ted Levine, Kathleen Quinlan, and Dan Byrd) toward a shortcut through the desert that will (supposedly) shave hours off their trip to California. The shortcut is sabotaged, however, and the truck pulling the family trailer is totaled; in the meantime, the Conservative Father (Levine) and Liberal Son-in-Law (Aaron Stanford) head off to find help. "Hills" is deliberately-paced for about the first 40 minutes, providing some overly typical characterization and dialog; it is when the 'trailer siege' sequence rolls around that this remake kicks into high gear and doesn't let up. While keeping faithful to the source material, Aja uses grainy film stock, different film speeds, and a buffet of abstractly-rendered blood and viscera to put this remake over the top (in a way, Craven's film was a victim of the technology of the time).
The performances complement the material fairly well; while the characters begin as typical drones of current Americana, the film gives everyone ample opportunity to transcend their roles as a result of the extreme circumstances contained within. Aaron Stanford's limp-wristed cell-phone salesman transforms into a blood-spattered hero; Dan Byrd's easygoing son becomes a resourceful protector; Kathleen Quinlan's cheer-faced mother is reduced to a catatonic wreck. Among the mutants, Robert Joy ("Land of the Dead")'s Lizard leaves the biggest impression, a bloodthirsty savage sporting cinema's most hideous overbite.
Within the current Hollywood climate, where remakes are as standard-issue and bland as department-store mannequins, "The Hills Have Eyes" is a very rare achievement: not only does it transcend the usual low standards of studio horror, but also stomps its source flat. Definitely recommended.