Unbelievably high shock value that will leave you shaken

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2006)

Alexandre Aja gives you the goods and waits for your horrified squeals in gleeful delight in this wonderful re-imagined picture inspired by Wes Craven's "take-no-prisoners" film from 1977 with Dee Wallace Stone. We have two families. One is of a miner colony who refuses to leave their homeland before a nuclear strike. The results are plain disastrous and terrible, leaving them scarred, deformed, and just plain obsessed on getting anything of their former life back, including violence and stealth. We also have the Carter family which is your typical American "apple pie" family which, by the looks of them, function very well together as a unit. After many an introduction, we get down to the core which is survival. A trap is triggered and sends our "apple pie" Carters whirling into one hell of a tourist trap. In the middle of the deserts of New Mexico, where no signal from a cell phone can be had, they attempt to make the best of things while sending a few people out for help. The mutated miners, who live on the opposite side of a nearby mine in a landscape of waste, death, and psychosis, savagely harass, abuse, and in several instances kill, rape, and feed off of their abandoned victims, The Carters. Here is where, naturally, everything is out of control and the terror never stops until the credits. You get shock after shock after shock. Whatever you think won't happen usually will and when you think the film has hit its worst moment, there is always something more heinous awaiting you from 'round a corner. This is quite possibly the best horror film I have seen in years as it is straight forward and given that, there is no laughing to be had here, just pure terror and as a horror fan, I can't be scared about that.