I love horror, but this ain't it.

Rating: 2/10 (8 March 2006)

Call me a hypocrite, but I can't help but think that while movies like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and even Hostel have some redeeming value (whether social commentary or just plain entertainment), this one's pretty damn pointless.
The good -The character of Bobby (the teenage son) carries the film, and is pretty much a stand-in for the usual female hero that survives in the end. The kid who plays him did an excellent job and was very realistic, and though the character makes some stupid mistakes throughout, he never really has you yelling at the screen.
-The music from Tomandandy (who did Mean Creek's excellent music) was good, mostly country and B-movie instrumentals (like in the old Dogs of War trailer).
The bad -Pretty much everything else.
-The back story about the miners refusing to leave their homes and being mutated by government nuclear tests is weak. Hey guys, if they were going to do tests there, chances are the mines were barren and you'd be living in a ghost town anyway. This makes the "point" of the movie- that anyone can be driven to murder like a barbarian- kind of moot. The trailer family (who, by the way, are hardly the usual city folk pitted against murderous hillbillies-- they're gun-wielding republicans who would probably vote to let them keep their land, while liberals may have stopped the nuclear testing in the first place) is killing because half of them have been raped and killed and had their baby stolen, not because they were asked to move out of their dying desert town. Maybe if the government had taken the people's children away or not warned the residents in time... I dunno. After Wrong Turn, maybe we're just lucky to get ANY explanation for inbred hicks killing outsiders, other than the fact that, hey, they're inbred hicks and they've got a taste for blood.
-The rape scene and ensuing murders were needlessly graphic. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my horror movie serial killers impotent and sexual threats nonexistent or implied, like in Texas Chain Saw Massacre or A Nightmare on Elm Street. If Oscar-winning filmmakers have trouble not making rape scenes exploitative, Alexandre Aja sure isn't going to pull it off.
The ugly -The make-up is pretty good. The creepiest mutated people were really the ones who looked most human.
I'm not sure I would even call this movie horror. It's more 1970s exploitation (unsurprisingly) meets snuff flick, with better special effects. Plenty will be disgusted, few will be truly scared. I guess now I know how other people see horror movies that I love.