The Hills are Alive with the Sounds of ... SLAUGHTER!!

Rating: 9/10 (18 March 2006)

I dislike the nowadays and boisterous remakes of classic horror movies as much as the next person but, ever since the news came that an update of "The Hills Have Eyes" was in talks, I had great expectations towards it. There are reasons for this rather enthusiast anticipation, actually. Unlike "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "The Fog", to name just two examples, Wes Craven's original 1977 screenplay was open for improvement AND Alexandre Aja would be just the right man for the job, as his own project "Haute Tension" is definitely one of the best horror films since the year 2000. That particular film wasn't really a masterpiece of plotting, but it was genuinely grim and barbaric and those are exactly the qualities a film like "The Hills Have Eyes" require as well. The new screenplay follows Craven's original fairly strict, except that the eyes in the hills aren't of members of an inbred family anymore but of an entire community of horribly mutated ghouls. Deep in the New Mexican deserts, a small village of coal miners once refused to leave the area at the time the American government decided to test nuclear weapons there, and now they still prowl the wasteland, assaulting travelers that dare to leave the main highways. The Carter family is next on the menu, and the mutants really don't care whether the victims are females, elderly folks or even newborn babies...
Alexandre Aja delivers the exact right amount of disturbing tension and really a lot more gore than you could possibly dream of. Much more than the overrated Eli Roth, this young French filmmaker is the new prodigy of horror. Strictly talking in terms of cinema, "The Hills Have Eyes" is also a more than decent production. The dialogs are fluently written and the characters are a lot more likable than in the original. By them I primarily refer to the members of the Carter family, as Michael Berryman's charisma as creepy Pluto remains unequaled. Altering the background of the desert-people into mutants was a pretty intelligent move by Aja, though. Despite being sadistic and utterly repulsive-looking bastards, these people are basically a sort of "victims" themselves, which brings a lot of extra depth and unsubtle social criticism in the overall simplistic story. I'm sure this film also had its share of flaws, like the editing being a little too MTV-ish perhaps, but the thrills and fast pacing were just too overpowering to have me bother about them. Kudos also to the terrific selection of songs, the convincing cast of actors and actresses and  last but not least  the personal trainer of those brilliant German Shepard dogs!