Pretty effective cheesy and gruesome fun

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2010)

Recent notable Alexandra Aja's The Hills Have Eyes begins in fairly awesome fashion, roaring out of the gates with a rather spectacular bit of murder. It may be holding to a standard slasher trope but it does it well, its a ballsy, exuberant piece of mayhem that gets things moving in just the right way. Sadly the film then sets about doing its best to undo this fine work, tiresomely moving back down the gears in its mishandled build up to its later shenanigans. The trouble is with the characters, or rather lack of them, writers Aja and Gregory Levasseur adopt the cheap shot approach to writing characters, piling up the symbols of a clichés eye view of Americana, guns, god and government, with a prominently shown American flag to drive home the impressionthat this isn't just any family we are watching but an American one writ large. The cast do well, but their roles are woven around careless emblems rather than genuine attempts to conceive worthwhile characters, as a result it appears that the makers care not for their characters, only the terrible scrapes that befall them. As a result I cared even less than I usually would, and so all the period of calm before the storm that the film takes is rather humdrum. The second half boasts some great fare though, brutal violence and bloody gore, smart pacing and generous quantities of cheese, its pretty darned silly but it works because if nothing else, Aja really knows his way around a violent set piece. He knows his way around a location as well, soaring camera and ruminating takes give the desert location a suitably desolate grandeur, while the cinematography of Maxime Sendre brings out a certain doomed and rusted out atmosphere. The Kurtzmann, Nicotero and Berger team do a fantastic job of effects as well, savage splatter rendered with grim realism is the order of the day here, as well as some effectively gnarled designs for the twisted desert dwellers. Acting wise everyone is solid, Ted Levine an effectively gruff patriarch, Aaron Stanford essays a fair badass in the films more ludicrous moments, while Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw and Emilie de Ravin all get to run through fear, screams and brutalisation, all coming off relatively sympathetic in the process. Undoubted highlight though was Robert Joy as the liveliest and most talkative of the mutant enemy. Making good use of quirky looks under make-up his leering, grotesque enthusiasm is a pleasure to watch, skin crawling villainry that steals every scene in which he appears. Overall this is pretty decent stuff, but it never made me care. Mishandled elements in the writing, a certain smugness, various silly moments in the second half as it adopts the manner of an action film, all this brings the film down to a pure and simple level of cheesy fun. Problem is, it just isn't joyful enough for this approach to really work, so the film rather lacks in impact. Still, its quite well done stuff, a pretty good time. Reasonably recommended at least.