Horror Comes to the Hills
Remake Stays Fresh
When horror master Wes Craven directed The Hills Have Eyes in 1977, audiences and critics were shocked. The story of a suburban family attacked in the desert by a band of inbred mutants ushered in a new era in horror, with an unflinching look at what terrifies us. The film became a cult classic and continues to influence the genre today. So the question must be asked: why remake The Hills Have Eyes almost 30 years later?
Written by: Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (screenplay), based on Wes Craven's 1977 screenplay
Starring: Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie de Ravin, and Dan Byrd
Rated
(for
strong gruesome violence and terror throughout, and for language)Running time: 107 min.
FilmGuru's Rating : 8 out of 10.
The Hills Have Eyes is directed by newcomer Alexandre Aja, who wowed audiences with High Tension. Aja was selected to helm the remake because Craven wanted someone who could bring a fresh perspective to the story. Together with screenwriter Gregory Levasseur, Aja focused on telling a survival story about family.
The new screenplay has been adapted from Craven's original script. It tells the story of a typical middle-class family driving through the New Mexico desert on their way to California. When they stop at a gas station to refuel, the attendant (a creepy old man played by Tom Bower) gives directions to a "shortcut" that will have them back on the highway in no time. As is often the case, however, the road less traveled makes all the difference.
The family SUV (with camper in tow) eventually hits a trap, blowing out the tires and crashing them into a large boulder. As they stagger out, checking to see if anyone is injured, it becomes apparent that someone will have to walk for help. Big Bob (Ted Levine), the family patriarch, heads back to the gas station. His pacifist son-in-law, Doug (Aaron Stanford), takes off in the other direction to look for the highway. The youngest son, Bobby (Dan Byrd), is left at the camper to protect the women.
Doug returns by nightfall, but Big Bob is nowhere to be found. In the middle of the night, the family is surrounded. While a distraction lures Mom, Bobby and Doug outside, the girls in the camper are violently attacked by mutated men who bring to mind inbreeding and genetic experiments gone wrong. The largest of the men tries to rape Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), whose cries for help go unheard. Chaos ensues.
If any of this sounds misogynistic, it really is. The men folk are protecting the women folk. It's all very tribal. But it's also very believable. The film is telling a tale that taps into the savage, primitive instincts of family and survival that the "civilized" world ignores. When push comes to shove, how far will a man go to protect his family?
Despite a reasonable premise, the film does take off on some wild tangents at times. Two of the kids put together an elaborate mousetrap to catch a would-be attacker and pull it off, almost flawlessly. Doug, on the other hand, makes numerous horror movie "mistakes" by allowing himself to be knocked out, locked up, and violently injured. Yet, despite even a gross hand wound, he manages to fight back.
The film uses a number of images to hammer home the back story of the mutants living in the hills. While never coming across as "sympathetic," the characters have a certain tragic melancholy about them. They are the true children of the atomic age, bred in caves by miners who refused to leave their homes when the desert was turned into a testing ground for the atom bomb. The "monsters" are those who prey upon the weak. For me, the sight of physically mutated children is more heart-wrenching than terrifying.
The mutants live in a ghost town built by the government to test the effects of atomic fallout. These homes, equipped with furnishings circa 1950 and including mannequin families, take on a surreal quality that combines the perfect nuclear family of the '50s with a chilling remembrance of mutual assured destruction.
Many of the films more horrific scenes try to gross out the audience -- and succeed. The film combines all the horror film cliches, from the fake-out scare to the gross scene of an animal found slaughtered. In a way, it is satisfying that The Hills Have Eyes hits all these notes. Aja has indeed learned his lessons from the master.
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