A Good Remake

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2006)

I enjoyed the remake of Hills Have Eyes. I thought the acting was above average and enjoyed the way director Alexander Aja built the suspense in the film. I can't remember the original real well, but this movie was much better than some of the more recent horror films. I was way better than The Fog, and much better than Cursed, another Wes Craven film.
The most surprising part about this movie was the acting. I actually felt sympathy for all the members of the family, and was glad to see them fight back against the mutants. I've actually grown sick of movies where the characters are simply put in a film only to be hacked to bits. However there are deaths of course, but I will not give any of that information away.
I also enjoyed Alexander Aja's camera work in this film. I enjoyed the various angles he employed to make the film more disturbing. The movie also had a gritty quality about it, which only added to the films overall creepiness. In fact it kind of reminded me of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hitcher. I never saw the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre though.
The plot of course is simple. A family is crossing the New Mexico desert on vacation and stops at a gas station where they get directions on how to get to California. The weird gas station attendant at first gives them the safe direction to go, but changes his mind when he discovers that maybe one of the members of the family has learn his little secret. We already know what that secret is when we are first introduced to this strange person. They follow the shortcut he gives them and mayhem en shews from there as they become stranded in the middle of nowhere. The vacationing family soon discovers that they are not alone and are being stalked by a murderous mutated family that lives in the hills surrounding them.
Very effective film with many gruesome scenes, Hills Have Eyes is definitely a movie that horror movie buffs should enjoy. Its starts with some very violent scenes and then builds from there into one of the better horror movies to come around in a long while. It also gives us a back story about the mutated family which deals with the nuclear bomb testing that went on around the area and how the bomb testing is what caused the mutations, making them what they are today.