The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Director: Alexandre Aja; Screenplay: Alexandre Aja & Grégory Levasseur; Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre

Cast: Aaron Stanford, Emilie de Ravin, Ted Levine

Based on the 1977 film

    Let’s get one thing clear – I hate horror movies. I decided to give a try at The Hills Have Eyes for only one reason and that is Aaron Stanford. You may know him from X-Men movies as Pyro or from his current project, TV series Nikita. He always manages to bring realness and dynamics to his characters. The same goes for his character Doug in Hills Have Eyes. So basically it’s about a family who goes on a road trip and crashes in the middle of nowhere desert. Wouldn’t be a biggie if there weren’t for the cannibalistic mutants running around, stealing babies and killing everybody one by one.

    I wouldn’t say it strikes you as a psychological film rather than emotional. There’s not much blood and gore what Saw only is based on but there are disgusting and mentally hurting moments what shall haunt you afterwards. The cast is talented and there are a lot of familiar faces. Emilie de Ravin to name one. The mutants…are believable. They didn't look like alien monkeys with a donkey ancestor. Kudos to the make-up apartment because they looked very nasty.  But what made this movie, well let’s say better, was the fact that the “mean” characters, however ugly, were made humane and understandable…on some level. They had their reasons however effed up, but at least there was some explanation to their doings. And honestly it was quite fun at one point. Here I do would like to explain that not fun in a comedy angle but more like oh-gawd-what-a-scene fun.

    The story was tight and there was always some development that explained some critical plot points. About half way through the movie it got intensive and continued that way until the very end. But the ending itself… talk about a horror movie cliché. But there were some, what people like to call “shocking”, scenes that were properly executed and very well done. I was impressed with cinematography, which made the movie so much better. I kind of liked the contrast between the beautiful desert and the horrible beings that ruled it. Very poetic. But what I was going to say was that originality in cinematography and horror movies don’t usually go together. Which in here is an exception. There are lots of shots of the endless desert, which amplifies the feeling of loneliness and hopelessness.

    Overall I may not like horror movies but I got some kind of a satisfaction from it. If Saw, with unduly torturous scenes is not your kind of a horror movie then Hills Have Eyes may be. But here’s a warning. Stay. Away. From. The. Sequels.

written by: Benni

links: IMDb