The hills do have eyes! (and a bit of blood!)

Rating: 10/10 (10 July 2011)

Wes Craven created the original "The Hills Have Eyes" in 1977, and the concept was certainly original and had lots of potential. Unfortunately Wes didn't manage to make a classic, but instead an average 70's slasher film. Here, Alexandre Aja takes that brilliant idea and perfects it into exactly what Wes was trying to achieve.
Of course only horror lovers will really understand why this film is so great. Others will simply think it's mindless violence, however I don't believe it is. At times it can seem like killing for the sake of killing but that only occurred to me once during the whole film and is that such a bad thing anyway? What's great here is the wonderful screenplay by Aja himself (I'll call him Aja because that amuses me) it begins as a slow burner. We are given plenty of likable character development, which paints a wonderful portrait of family life. My family isn't like this but I can certainly imagine this would be an accurate portrayal for many other families. The key to a really masterful slasher is having characters who we can relate to and care about. Aja has got this down to a tee! So Aja gives us brilliant characters for the first 40 minutes and teases the audience with only slight cameos of the mutants and then BAM! We're given this truly brutal and hideously memorable scene in within 10 minutes where everything happens! I won't spoil it for you but it really is horrific and as with all French directors, outlandishly brutal and realistic.
From here the film turns into this incredibly epic survival game where our anti-hero Doug goes on a bloody quest to find his baby. We're given suspense, tension (like in Aja's superb "High Tension") and edge-of-your-seat bloody fight sequences that always ends with you going "OOH!" or "YOUCH!" But at the same time thinking just how perfect these sequences are.
Aja's directing is really nice. He knows how to make the audience jump or how to make them pump with excitement. At times the cinematography can make you feel really isolated, with the long ominous shots of the desert hills and the endless planes of sand. This is film making at its best.
Love slasher horror? Then you will absolutely adore this! "The Hills Have Eyes" is 100x better than the original and that's due to Aja's remarkable directing and screenplay. The acting is pretty good to and the mutants are horrifying! Right from the make-up effects to the soundtrack, the hills do have eyes, they also have a heart and plenty of blood!