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

♥♥♥

 

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?

The Burning Plain (2008) - Powerful actresses elevate Arriaga's flawed debut

♥♥♥

Three generations of graceful women stars collide on this drama-indicating poster for Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain

A young woman learns that her mother is cheating on her new husband. A middle-aged woman head-waitress has sex with random men and is about to meet a consequence of her past ...

The Burning Plain is the debut for writer-director Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams (2003), writer). 
In the first story, set in New Mexico, Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone (2010)) is good as the distraught daughter, and Kim Basinger (The Informers (2008)) is excellent as the wife and mother, who has re-experienced joy and intimacy with warm Joaquim de Almeida (Our Brand Is Crisis (2015)). And Charlize Theron (Dark Places (2015)) is fascinating in the other story, which takes place up North, in Oregon.
Regrettably, it takes an awful long time before the connection between the two story planes became apparent to me, and then there's the issue of the film's tone, which is permanently set far beneath the floor-boards. unflinchingly dour. The Burning Plain is simply too plain.
SPOILER Theron is plagued at all times, and when her abandoned daughter enters the story, their interaction just isn't very natural, and the ending, in which it is indicated that Theron will now take part in the girl's life, therefore doesn't really settle convincingly.
Arriaga's only feature to date is an advanced bowl of tristesse.

Related posts:
 
Guillermo Arriaga: Babel (2006) or, Everyone's Connected (writer)
21 Grams (2003) or, Hardcore Life (writer) 
Amores Perros (2000) or, People - Bad/Dogs - Good (writer)

Theron gives an interview about her work on the film here. The video has Spanish subtitles

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 5.6 mil. $
= Mega-flop
[The Burning Plain premiered 29 August (Venice Film Festival, Italy) and runs 107 minutes. Shooting took place in New Mexico, Oregon, including Portland, and in Texas from November - December 2007. The film opened #46 to a small 58k $ first weekend in 21 theaters in North America, where it never conquered better numbers and only grossed 200k $ (3.6 % of the total gross). The 3 biggest markets were Italy with 1.8 mil. $ (32.1 %), Spain with 1 mil. $ (17.9 %) and France with 870k $ (15.5 %). The film won Lawrence an award in Venice. Arriaga has retreated from features since The Burning Plain and has instead worked on several short films, both as writer and director. Theron returned in The Road (2009); Basinger in While She Was Out (2008) and Lawrence in The Bill Engvall Show (2007-09) and theatrically in Winter's Bone (2010), her breakthrough. The Burning Plain is rotten at 36 % with a 4.9/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Burning Plain?