Better than I expected

Rating: 6/10 (12 May 2009)

Let me be clear about one thing: This is not a good film. The narrative is sorely lacking in places, the dialogue is nothing special, and in some parts the acting is almost painful to watch. In too many cases the director attempts to cover up bad writing with disgusting and disturbing special effects - a sad trend in today's horror cinema. And speaking of horror, outside of those special effects, very little in this movie is actually scaring. There are no ominous moments, nothing to psychologically shake the viewer, and what few genuine scares the film does contain are all pretty much ruined by the all-too-obvious accompanying music cues.
That said, if you watch this as something other than a horror film, it can actually be fairly entertaining. This is more along the lines of something like Evil Dead 2, Planet Terror, or Army of Darkness - each of which has about the same amount of realism as The Hills Have Eyes. This movie features a mixture of comedy and action similar to the previously mentioned movies. The violence gets quite comical at parts, and the fight sequences are pretty well-coordinated. While THHE lack's the clever catchphrases that make Ash so popular, it does manage to maintain one's interest throughout the movie. In fact, if the creators had spent more time molding the movie into something like Army of Darkness, this would probably have turned out to be a much better film. Unfortunately, it suffers from attempts to keep it in the horror genre, and the makers do not have enough imagination to make that concept work here. As an action-thriller-comedy, however, it's worth a rental.