Remakes do work you know.

Rating: 7/10 (17 June 2009)

Ah, the homely, squabbling Carter family. Traveling through the Nevada desert on the way to San Diego. When suddenly their trailer is beset with punctures and promptly crashes off the road. Was this an accident? Or is there here, in a place where atomic testing was done years before, really eyes in them thar hills?
So here it be, yet another horror remake of an older much loved picture from the age of the X certificate. Taking on the task, and wrath of fans, for The Hills Have Eyes is Alexandra Aja. Aja, boasting good horror credentials after directing 2003s Haute Tension (Switchblade Romance), actually pulls it off rather well. Sure it at times feels like he's confused as to if it wants to be "horror porn" or a "boo jump scary movie" but by and large it's a dirty damn grimy chiller.
Once Aja submitted his cut to the US censors for classification, word quickly spread that it was so grotty and sick it got the death knell NC-17. Rumours were rife that the film was so disgusting, people were walking out of test screenings feeling ill. There is no such thing as bad publicity, but in this case it became a bad case of unachievable expectations, the desensitised MTV crowd just wasn't enamoured with it. This was after all a hip horror director in waiting, aided on production duties by Wes Craven himself {director of the original}, throw in the shrewdly out there press reports, well it should have been the second coming of the anti-Christ in many eyes.
Yet now it's finally getting support in the right circles, and that's rightly so. For Aja builds his film up nicely with an extended introduction to our characters, whom we know are soon to be desperately violated. The atmosphere, thru gliding camera work and plinking score, is heavy, pervading doom is the order of the day, and then Aja unleashes his hellish barely human monstrosities {led by a fabulously vile Robert Joy}. Blood flies and screams are abound as Aja gleefully starts to up the anti for screen horror violence.
Very much following the marker set by Craven's original, is actually what stops this from truly breaking the mould. It lacks freshness to go with it's willingness to set bloody parameters. But, and it's a good but, this is still one fine and squeamish little ride, one that lingers like a naughty thought for days in the memory. 7/10