...and they should use them to watch a better movie

Rating: 3/10 (23 April 2006)

"The Hills Have Eyes" continues several bothersome contemporary trends. The fact that it's yet another remake of a "classic" 70s horror flick is at this point no surprise. Sure, when there are folks out there like M. Night Shyamalan and Lucky McKee who are producing original and effective scares, the sheer laziness of all this rehashing seems particularly offensive and tiresome. But what's truly troubling about films like "The Hills Have Eyes" is their seeming embrace of extreme brutality for its own sake.
Not having seen Wes Craven's original, I'm at a loss for comparison. I imagine a parable about the effects of US nuclear policy, though, would have packed much more topical resonance in the 70s. As it is, there are just a lot of things about this new version that make very little sense. Like why the film adopts a deliberate look and feel of decades past (the protagonists tow around an old-school Airstream trailer), but makes sure we know its characters are cell phone-equipped. Or what we're supposed to make of the nuclear mutants who stalk our unsuspecting travelers. "You made us what we've become," gurgles one from a bloated, twisted face. I don't know my history well enough to be sure when the last nuclear tests were in the American Southwest, but I know it was a while ago. Are we to assume they've just been happily reproducing through the years, even though sterility is one of the major effects of radiation? Otherwise, they should be elderly mutants. Or more likely, dead. And is it reasonable to believe that the dummy town they inhabit, presumably a former test site in a blast radius, would still be equipped with posed mannequins for post-blast study? There are too many silly inconsistencies with which to take issue. Possibly aware of this, "The Hills Have Eyes" does its best to plumb new depths of graphic violence. It's a particular fan of the Axe To The Head maneuver, which it deploys no fewer than three times. My issue isn't with such violence per se, but with the ends for which it's used. "The Hills Have Eyes" appears most interested in revolting us, which is very different from wanting to scare us, and a different species entirely from making us think. The film seems to fancy itself an updated allegory, but a throat-stabbing with an American flag does not a satire make.
I suppose it can be argued that the political and social extremes defining the current times are now being reflected pro rata in arts and entertainment; that increasing grotesquerie in movies is simply another facet of a culture currently debating to what inhuman lengths it will go in the name of safety and security. But films like "The Hills Have Eyes" play the insidious trick of cloaking themselves loosely with the language of social commentary and satire, without making a genuine effort to engage in them. Such dishonesty is the last thing we need these days.