THE
HILLS HAVE EYES (2006)
Director:
Alexandre Aja
Creative films in Hollywood
are a dying breed. Remakes and films based on old television
shows are increasingly becoming the norm over the last decade,
while original films are often relegated to limited releases.
Filmmakers have even resorted to remaking films from other
countries (like Japan's Shall We Dance? or Korea's The
Lake House) because they're running out of material here in
America. While no genre has been safe from the concept of
remakes, the horror genre has been hit especially hard. Whether
they be remakes of Asian ghost stories or of classics from the
'70s and '80s, many are unwanted, many are uncalled for, few turn
out to be good. While these remakes often draw the ire of the
horror devoted (and enthusiasm from a younger generation who have
yet to discover the originals), there is no stopping the horror
remake juggernaut. However, genre legend Wes Craven seemingly
decided to take a cue from George Romero's 1990 remake of Night
of the Living Dead and organize a remake of one of his own
films, namely his 1977 sophomore film The Hills Have Eyes.
If your movie's going to be remade, why not redo it yourself?
Teaming with Hills Have Eyes producer Peter Locke,
Craven recruited High Tension director Alexandre Aja and
his writing partner Grégory Levasseur to adapt Craven's film for
more modern audiences. And guess what? It's not a bad remake.
Our tale of terror opens in a lonely,
isolated spot in the hills of the New Mexico desert. The area
appears to be populated by one solitary gas station, so remote
that the sign out front advertises that it's the only gas station
for 200 miles. It's obvious that the station doesn't get many
customers, so the station's lone attendant (Tom Bower) is
surprised to see a truck hauling an old Airstream trailer pull up
for some service. As the attendant refills the truck, we are
introduced to the all-American Carter family, who are making this
pit stop while on a road trip to San Diego. Family patriarch Big
Bob (Ted Levine) firmly believes the road through the desert is a
shortcut despite all greater logic, much to the chagrin of his
wife Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), their bored teenage children Bobby
(Dan Byrd) and Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), married daughter Lynn
(Vinessa Shaw) and her dorky liberal husband Doug (Aaron
Stanford), and Lynn and Doug's infant daughter Catherine (Maisie
Camilleri Preziosi).
With the gas tank full and
everyone ready to go, Big Bob is just about to drive off when the
attendant stops him, telling him of a quick side road not on the
map, about two miles from the station. The Carters are already
lost, so if that road can take them to anything resembling
civilization, why not? It's not like listening to a suspicious
old codger in a horror movie ever got anyone into trouble, right?
Right? So the Carters take that little side road, but end up
running over a row of spikes conveniently placed across the
middle of the road before crashing headlong into a rock. Their
cell phones don't work and Big Bob doubts their CB radio will get
any kind of signal, so they're stranded. The Carters need help if
they're going to get out of this predicament. But as night falls,
they find not help, but violence, bloodshed, and carnage as they
learn that they are at the mercy of a band of mutated,
cannibalistic psychopaths that call the desert hills their home.
The original Hills Have
Eyes is considered by many to be a landmark in '70s
grindhouse horror, and this remake is faithful to its roots. The
movie is an unrelenting venture into madness, a wonderful
callback to when horror movies were meant to horrify. While
admittedly the remake is much more polished than its source
material (thus losing some of the original's "rough around
the edges" charm), the movie still manages to improve upon
the micro-budgeted, almost amateurish nature of the original. The
grainy look of the original makes it look almost like a home
movie (despite its cheap effects), while the remake's glossy
sheen makes it seem as if it has something of a dreamlike
quality, like it were floating along the boundaries between
fantasy and reality.
I was really amazed with
Alexandre Aja's work on High Tension, and he continued
to impress me with The Hills Have Eyes. Aja is an
extremely capable filmmaker, and I believe that with a few more
movies under his belt, he could become the next big horror
auteur. He utilizes relatively shaky cinema movements
(wonderfully done by cinematographer Maxime Alexandre) and smooth
yet fast-paced editing on order to pull the audience into the
world the movie occupies. While the quick edits and fast camera
movements would be annoying and distracting in other movies, they
work to create an unnerving, unsettling atmosphere that the movie
benefits from.
With the exception of a few
changes, the exemplary screenplay penned by Aja and Grégory
Levasseur maintains a high level of faithfulness to Craven's
original film. The movie could have alienated devotees of the
original by either staying too close or straying too far from the
source, but for the most part, I think they succeeded. However,
unlike the original movie, there is no attempt to really get to
know the antagonists. There is somewhat of an attempt to paint
Laura Ortiz's character Ruby as "the good one" (akin to
Ruby's 1977 counterpart played by Janus Blythe), but since the
antagonists are not given much development at all, it all ends up
seeming unimportant in the end. There also seems to be no real
attempt to give the cannibals a family dynamic as seen in
Craven's earlier version. In the 1977 film, the characters were
an evil, inbred version of a normal family, with the father, the
kids willing to please their parents, and the rebellious black
sheep of the family. But 29 years later, the villains in the new Hills
Have Eyes are merely monsters hideously mutated by years of
radiation fallout, with a lust to kill any outsiders that dare
stumble across their humble abode. While making the villains more
akin to a maniacal family unit akin to Leatherface's brood from
the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series could have been more
frightening than what Aja and Levasseur gave us, the villains
still manage to be quite frightening and intimidating.
The score composed by Tom
Hajdu and Andy Milburn (credited as "tomandandy") is
not so much music as it is a horror story told through sound.
Their score is absolutely perfect for the movie, and without
becoming overbearing, it goes against the grain of the
overproduced, nonchalant scores many horror movies have nowadays.
The movie also boasts incredible special effects (supervised by
Gregory Nicotero and Howard Berger from KNB EFX Group), along
with a cast whose abilities far exceed those of the original's
cast. Each of the protagonists are believable and non-offensive
(and I must say that I really liked Ted Levine), but
unfortunately, the cannibals don't really stand out because they
aren't given any time to individually shine. However, I must say
that Desmond Askew's short performance as "Big Brain"
(a wheelchair-bound freak with a frighteningly oversized cranium)
is too creepy for words. His hoarse, wheezing voice alone is
unsettling, but when combined with his appearance, Askew's one
scene becomes one of the movie's most memorable set pieces. And I
must ask: am I the only one that couldn't believe that the Ted
Levine from The Hills Have Eyes is the same guy that
played Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs? If it
weren't for the name and voice, I'd believe you if you said they
were two different people.
When it comes right down to
it, both the original Hills Have Eyes and its remake
assert that humans are animals by nature, but it's all a matter
of how that animalistic side is embraced. Yeah, the antagonists
are violent, deformed, lunatic cannibals, but once pushed to the
edge, the protagonists are as equally insane and quick to resort
to violence in dire circumstances. And like its predecessor,
Aja's interpretation of The Hills Have Eyes is nothing
short of unsettling and borderline disturbing, and it's sporting
a both a vicious mean streak and a pitch black heart. So in
short, those of you with weak constitutions or an aversion to
depravity in horror cinema, you might want to skip it. However,
it is not only a remake that actually manages to improve upon its
source material, but a well-crafted piece of nihilistic horror
art, I give the 2006 version of The Hills Have Eyes four
stars and a seal of approval.
Final
Rating: ****