Cinematic torture!

Rating: 1/10 (30 May 2009)

This movie is cinematic torture. The original 1977 version was far from being a masterpiece, but it far beats this nonsense.
The 2006 version is a typical 2000s remake filled with boring characters, speeded-up action scenes, endless usage of the f-word in regular conversations, characters becoming hysterical with little provocation and very bad CGI effects.
As I've said already, the original was far from great. But it had a few great scenes that really stood out. When the old guy got burnt in the original, the scene was very intense and conveyed emotion. In this version, the old guy's death was executed too quickly to have any meaning to the rest of the movie and his family soon forgot all about him. Just about every other killing in the movie was executed this way.
The villains in the original were scary and menacing because they were so unpredictable and their initial appearance came as a complete surprise. In the 2006 version, the appearance of the villains was telegraphed well in advance. Even more surprisingly, the villains were acting even more hysterically than the main characters, choosing to smash up furniture and other objects for no reason. They were too laughable too be scary, but unfortunately they couldn't bring the movie up (or should it be down) to the "so bad it's good" level.
In the original movie, a lot of effort was put in to create atmosphere during the set-up scenes for the main action. In the remake there is no atmosphere at all and because we get to see the ENTIRE desert landscape around where our protagonists are camping out it must be rather obvious to them whether or not some weirdo was hanging around. It was due to stupid behaviour on the part of the protagonists that they got killed. Most of them were so annoying that I was actually rooting for the villains to dispatch them as soon as possible.
A baby was used by the producers to help create emotion from the viewers. Unfortunately, there are very few occasions when the baby appears to be in any serious danger of being harmed, thus killing any nail-biting tension that could have been developed. In the end, one of the "villains" turns out to be so human and compassionate that she saves the baby.
The remake is devoid of any suspense. Camera angles show us too much, thus killing countless opportunities for suspense that was available. Action scenes (i.e. the best parts) were speeded-up, killing the intensity, and the rest of the time the movie plodded along at a snail's pace with endless boring conversations and poor acting. In short, potential was wasted.
For a decent movie with a similar theme, see WRONG TURN. Or even better see the masterpiece that really kick-started this particular strand of the genre - THE Texas CHAIN SAW MASSACRE.
Wes Craven so desperately wanted to improve upon his original 1977 movie and create something worthy of his talents like he did when he made the excellent movies THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, SCREAM and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. With THE HILLS HAVE EYES, he failed miserably. Hopefully he'll be back on track when he makes the next movie.