The Hills Have Eyes

I begin by saying that I’ve never seen the original version of this movie, done by Wes Craven in 1977. In fact, somehow I never even saw a preview for it. I’d seen a few clips of it on the “100 Scariest Movie Moments Ever” series on either AMC or Bravo a while back. However, I knew the premise, I knew it had a reputation as a very scary movie, and so therefore I had high expectations.

I can’t say I was really disappointed in the movie, but it wasn’t quite as good as I was expecting. I think that comes from my getting very easily pissed off when characters do stupid things; that reasoning is why I disliked When A Stranger Calls so much – I had a hard time dredging up much sympathy for a character who apparently has an IQ in the 2-digit range, as demonstrated by her choosing the stupidest option at every turn. In order for us to be really pulled into a horror film, we need to care what happens to the characters. That’s why the stupid and immoral ones die first and the killing progresses to the smarter and better people for whom we have some sympathy, giving us more time to worry about the fates of these nicer, stronger, more sympathetic characters. In this remake of The Hills Have Eyes, it isn’t always the obvious next victim who is the actual next victim, which is actually a nice change of pace, but there were still problems of people doing stupid things that make you scream at them, “You’re a moron, and if you get killed now, you deserve it! Say, hasta la vista, gene pool!”

Before I get too much into my complaints about the movie, I want to start with the good things, of which there are many. It’s a decent premise: around the time of the nuclear testing out in the southwest desert, families of miners refused to leave the testing areas they had previously called home and instead of leaving, hid out in the mines in the mountains, dooming themselves and their descendants to deformities and birth defects and apparently insanity. The movie concerns a family on a cross-country trip for the parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. They’re en route to San Diego, but the dad wanted to take a (really long) gander at the desert, and so they find themselves directed by a gas attendant in cahoots with the crazy mine people down a dirt road right into a trap. They crash and are at least eight miles from the gas station, even further from any other semblance of civilization. Cell phones? Oh, that’s been thought of. There’s no signal.

The family consists of the mom and dad (Kathleen Quinlan and Ted Levine), oldest sister (Vinessa Shaw) and her husband (Aaron Stanford) and baby daughter, and two teenaged children Brenda (_) and Bobby (Dan Byrd). They all make it through the accident unharmed, Dad decides to walk back to the gas station for help while sending son-in-law in the other direction to see if he can find the freeway. As we all know, splitting up in horror movies equals badness afoot, and this situation is no exception.

I don’t want to go further into the plot from here. One of the cool things about this movie is that you don’t know who, if anyone, is safe from harm. There are some scenes that are the most intense I’ve ever seen in a film. You also can’t count on it NOT showing you certain things, and those moments are quite shocking. Anyone wanting to know how to make a good, intense horror film should definitely study this one to see how intensity is done right. I also have to say that this is one that should definitely be seen in the theater for the fantastic job done with the programming of the digital sound. This is some of the most effective use of surround sound I’ve ever experienced.

All of the acting was superb, but I wanted to take a moment to praise two especially good performances. First, Aaron Stanford, who plays the son-in-law. I won’t say anything about his character’s fate beyond the fact that he didn’t die as soon as I thought he would, but I have to give props to Stanford for making the character way more complex than I was expecting him to be based on his introduction. Stanford is on his way to being one of those great chameleon actors, I think: when I watched this, I had no idea he was the same guy who played Pyro in X2. The other standout to me was Dan Byrd as the youngest family member Bobby, who really becomes the film’s main character. I saw him on TNT’s Salem’s Lot miniseries but didn’t think much of him then, but I think this may be the film that really gets him noticed and leads to more awesome roles like this one.

Like I said before, there were several moments in this movie where I was really aggravated at characters’ stupidity; I found myself saying, “Dude, how could you possibly think this is a good plan?” quite frequently, and anytime you do that, you’re yanking yourself out of the movie’s reality and into your own. This equals bad, particularly in a horror movie where the whole point experiencing it like you’re actually there, and feeling fear because of it. I think the middle of the movie is the strongest part of it because it had the fewest of these moments. You generally understand why everyone does what they do until about the last twenty minutes. During that last bit, which should probably have been the most intense of all, I kept getting pulled out of the moment because I was so irritated with the character in question for the choices being made. Yes, let’s run up some stairs instead of going outside. Yes, lets leave a loaded gun a the feet of this guy who appears to be dead and yet is in a horror movie so can’t possibly be. It didn’t ruin the movie, but a character making slightly smarter or more understandable decisions would have made this section of the film as good as the rest.

I would not say that these issues I have with the last act of the film are reason to avoid the Hills Have Eyes. Horror movie fans should definitely catch it. Anyone else, particularly those who have a hard time with really intense scenes, should probably avoid it unless they are a glutton for punishment.