Needlessly Savage and Not Remotely Scary

Rating: 2/10 (3 October 2006)

My wife recently planned a night out with her girlfriends, so I had the T.V. to myself and the chance to watch some movies she wouldn't want to see. I had a hankering for some good old fashioned vintage porn and a good scary movie, so I rented this, "Debbie Does Dallas" and "Taboo." Of the three films I rented, "The Hills Have Eyes" was by far the most pornographic, and the last of the bunch I'd want my child (if I had one) to see.
It astounds me that the MPAA will give a movie like "9 Songs" (which does happen to be a lousy movie) an NC-17 rating, virtually guaranteeing that no mainstream movie theatre will carry it, just because it depicts real sex between real people, and then turn around and give a movie like "Hills" an R. What kind of sick world do we live in when the sight of penetration is believed to be more damaging to our youth than the sight of people getting axe picks through their heads and their intestines ripped out? And lest you think I'm just a cranky prude, let me say that I love horror movies, and I'm always on the outlook for good ones ("The Descent" happened to be fantastic) but I've nearly given up hope that today's batch of filmmakers know the first thing about what scares people. I'm not opposed to gore, and I think it can be used effectively (again, "The Descent"). My objections to "The Hills Have Eyes" rest almost entirely on the fact that it's not effective horror. It's gruesome, to be sure, and it does inspire a sort of visceral reaction from the viewer, but so would a car accident. I've not seen the original Wes Craven version, but the film that this most reminded me of, 1974's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," gave me close to the same feeling, except that Tobe Hooper's film is unbelievably scary in addition to being nauseating, and it uses true film-making skills to scare the pants off of you, not simply digitally enhanced makeup and sound effects.
It depresses me that there's a market for movies like "The Hills Have Eyes." I must be getting older, because I'm starting to worry about the state of our country's youth. Doesn't anyone have the attention span anymore to be scared by a clever, psychological thriller, or even a sophisticated slasher film like "Chainsaw Massacre" or "Halloween," where your imagination did the work that computers do now? Horror movies used to be fun -- now they're just exhausting. I used to come away from then scared but exhilarated -- now I come away just feeling bad. It's hard to have fun in a movie that shows a woman's baby being held at gunpoint so that a sadistic mutant can suck on her boobs, and then shoot her in the head anyway; or in which a boy comes across the body of his dead mother being disemboweled and eaten.
I don't believe that anyone should be stopped from making films like this; I just wish people would have the brains to stop wanting to see them. Send a message to film directors and have them bring good horror back to the screens.
Grade: D