Just another mediocre remake of a unique horror movie.

Rating: 6/10 (16 March 2006)

The original The Hills Have Eyes was an OK horror film, if not a bit slow and a bit rough around the edges. The remake lacks the raw realism of the 1980 version and it borrows too heavily from other recent remakes (including their flaws). It has Texas Chainsaw Massacre all over it and the mutant village reminded me of the House of Wax. Don't you think these remakes are following a formula? 20 minutes of bonding (pop culture jokes) between characters from popular TV shows or teen angst movies, then 20 minutes of wandering around to build suspense that is ineffective because everything has a familiar and predictable feel. The wandering around ends when the stupidest character reads a newspaper clipping (killers love to make scrapbooks, always) and gets killed before he can warn anyone. Instead of using creative writing the writers make the characters so stupid that that they put themselves in dangerous situations; unfortunately, people like seeing whimpering Nimrods die which makes suspenseful pacing becomes wasted time. What's with the gratuitous ammo wasting (a trained policeman firing randomly into the dark and his son waiting until the bandits are acres away before shooting)? When the daughter was heard screaming in the trailer why did the helpless mother and older daughter go see what was going on instead of the men with guns; somebody dangerous set your dad on fire(he didn't spontaneously combust), and now that person is raping your sister. When the dog was attacking the ax wielding ogre, why not take the chance to bash the ogre's brains in instead of poorly barricading yourself in a plywood bathroom? So you shot Mr. Cleft lip in the arm and he fell... shoot him in the head! Don't put your gun down right next to him; you don't know how many other mutants there are out there, and he might be playing possum. Plus, the mutant that was feeding on your mom was 30 feet away and unarmed... do you take time to aim a shot to kill him? No. What you do is waste all your shots while running away just to set up an overly elaborate trailer explosion. I am not impressed with the writing of this film, the only thing clever about it were the make-up/blood effects, but everything else has been done so many times that i could hardly get excited about anything happening on screen. I am a fan of B-Movies, and there is fun to be had here (the audience was not scared at all but laughing the whole time), but please, no more hurried remakes, people! These are the movies that got me into horror, and you are beginning to hurt my feelings as well as insult my intelligence.