The Hills Have Eyes (2006) or, My Big Fat Mutant Cannibal Family Trip

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A blond woman caught in a vice of bloody terror in a grimy design on this effective poster for Alexandre Aja's The Hills Have Eyes

An American family drive through the New Mexican desert in their RV, where they break down in an area that unfortunately has atomic test mutant cannibals roaming in the hills.

 

The Hills Have Eyes is written by Grégory Levasseur (Maniac (2012)) and co-writer/director Alexandre Aja (Furia (1999)), remaking the same-titled 1977 mega-hit horror by Wes Craven (Scream (1996)).

It's another action-packed post-millennial horror remake. The crazed mutants are hard to identify with (to put it mildly), and the charm of the story is limited. The sound work and countless scenes of characters looking-out-into-the-dark-only-for-a-menacing-shadow-to-pass-by also detract.

But the special effects, especially the mutants, are inventive, and there are some good horror ideas in The Hills Have Eyes, which positions it over other recent horror remakes such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and The Amityville Horror (2005).

 

Related post:

 

Alexandre Aja: Piranha 3D (2010) - Aja's gory sexploitation remake is a hoot

Watch a short clip from the film here

 

Cost: 15 mil. $

Box office: 70 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.66 times its cost)

[The Hills Have Eyes was released 10 March (North America, UK and Ireland) and runs 106 minutes. Shooting took place from June 2005 - ? in Morocco. The film opened #3, behind fellow new releases Failure to Launch and The Shaggy Dog, to a 15.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#5) and grossed 41.7 mil. $ (59.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 6.2 mil. $ (8.9 %) and Germany with 3.6 mil. $ (5.1 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 1.5/4 star rating, translating to 2 notches under this one. The film's success, though much less pregnant than the original film's, prompted less successful sequel The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) by a new director. Aja returned with Mirrors (2008). The Hills Have Eyes is rotten at 52 % with a 5.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Hills Have Eyes?