Moments of sheer brilliance are ruined by moments of pure stupidity.

Rating: 7/10 (16 March 2007)

This comment contains very mild spoilers Let's start off by saying that although I thoroughly enjoyed Alexandre Aja's remake of Wes Craven's groundbreaking shocker THE HILLS HAVE EYES, most of what I will focus on in this review is comparing the original to the remake, and to Aja's other film HIGH TENSION.
THE HILLS HAVE EYES starts off with a laughably bad opening scene. I dunno if Aja intended laughs with this part, but there's something comical about a 7 foot deformed Neanderthal mutant spinning an astronaut around with a pick-axe in the middle of the desert. Is it just me? Now that is an example of one incredibly dumb scenes.
After that we are treated to an awesome credits, with a cool 50s song and footage of deformities and nuclear explosions. I have to give props to modern horror films, the opening credits always deliver something interesting.
Following the credits we meet an old gas station owner packing up his store. Enter a nice typical all-American god fearing family; the Carters. Father (Big Bob Carter), mother (Ethel Carter), eldest daughter (Lynn Carter), eldest daughters daughter (Catherine) and husband (Doug), younger daughter (Brenda Carter), son (Bobby Carter) and two faithful dogs (Beauty and Beast). The family are shown the off-road route by the gas station owner and told they can take the back way to say a few hours drive.
The gas station owner was poorly acted. In the original, John Steadman portrayed the disturbed old man with a campy, charismatic and frantic charm about him. It seemed as though Tom Bower just wanted to get out of the role as quickly as possible, and his performance was rushed and hollow.
When the family station wagon and Winnebago crash off the road, the Carters are stranded in the middle of the desert. Big Bob pulls out two guns, gives one to his son Bobby and keeps one for himself, and Doug and Big Bob head off in different directions looking for some help. When are clan of cannibalistic mutants attack the family in their Winnebago, the resulting film could have been a horror fans wet-dream. Rape, cannibalism, a cool setting, cool music, dismemberment, mutants, homage to famous films, hot young things, home invasions, revenge, sadism, everything a fan could hope for. But THHE is missing something. The mutants have no personality, unlike in the original, when the mutants had ALL the personality. They're not recognizable, and the scenes are not suspenseful. Aja goes all out for shocks and jump scares, where as Craven went for suspense and little violence. Intead of Brendas blood curdling screams terrifying you, it was that a mutant was sticking his meat in her. Instead of Lynns fight for the life of her child, she's getting her breast milk drunk. Instead of a social commentary on who the real evil is and which family rally is more civilized, Aja ditches that and goes for a pretty poorly done kill-the-monster-you-created angle.
One of my favourite things about this film were the kills were very well done, the rape scene was pretty suspenseful (I loved the rock musical score), Big Bobs capture was also suspenseful, and the best part was how much Doug was willing to do for the life of Catherine. There was also a cool homage to one o my favourites, TRUE ROMANCE, where Doug, clearly defeated, sticks an ice pick through a mutants foot and resourcefully gets the better of him.
The acting was good, I liked the casting of Emile De Ravin as Brenda and Vinessa Shaw as Lynn. And Aja's style was clearly evident, in comparison to HIGH TENSION. Like the time inconsistencies and graphic murder, and the cool camera work he does. Little heavy on the CGI when it came to the mutants but they still looked good.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed THE HILLS HAVE EYES, I've probably seen it about 5 times now. But it fails in comparison to the original and Aja's other film HIGH TENSION. Better than most of the recent crop of remakes.
7/10.