Horror at its best

Rating: 8/10 (13 March 2006)

The Carters, an all American family, decide to take a family vacation across the desert. Instead of fun in the sun the Carters, including the rather out-cast son-in-law Doug (Aaron Stanford), will face something beyond their wildest nightmares in the hills of New Mexico.
After coming across a lone gas station run by a eccentric (Tom Bower), the Carter patriarch 'Big Bob' (Ted Levine) decide to take the advice of traveling on a road that isn't listed on the map. In doing so, he drives his family across into the off limit areas run by the Department of Energy where, in the sixties, nuclear tests took place. It is in these empty hills where the Carter family will experience the wrath of those who suffered from such tests and have little compassion on outsiders for whom the blame for their current state.
Only after the first series of attacks on the Carter family, and the eventual mutilation of several of the members, that we discover what the truth is. Miners, who refused to be driven away from their homes before the tests, hid in their mines while the tests were enacted upon their land. The result was a generation of physical and mental scarred beings who now murder and pillage any who come across their hills. Of course, they do this in league with the eccentric who owns the gas station who makes a good profit off the valuables they drop off for him.
Only the tenacity of Doug, the courage Bobby Carter (Dan Byrd), and even sole remaining family dog, keep what is left of the Carter family alive. Through deceptions, and brutal hand to hand combat, what remains of the family finds vengeance against the group of mutants and survives another day.
But perhaps only 'another day'. For it becomes clear that they are still being watched even after their nightmare ends...
What makes The Hills Have Eyes so good is that it is an old fashioned horror movie with no strings attached. No political agenda, no advanced amounts of CGI, no big budget thrills. It runs only on suspense, acting, good make up, and the ability of the director to tell a good story. And that, especially in horror movies, is hard to do. It is violent, bloody, and even graphic at times. But it is a good movie that never lets down.
8 out of 10