From Fox Atomic comes this completely unnecessary but expected sequel to 2005’s successful remake of Wes Craven’s 1977 cannibal mutant thriller which itself had a horrible sequel that this particular entry isn’t based on. Confused yet?
It hardly matters, of course, the lineage of what is now a dead franchise thanks to this shameful, boneheaded entry – written by Wes Craven and his son Jonathan from a hotel room in under a month – which is a convoluted mess that teeters between inept dialogue, characters so dull that I pined for stereotypes, political allegory that is painfully obvious and pathetic at the same time and the most ineffective gore sequences of recent memory.
A soul-sucking pic - even for Wes Craven, a man equaled only by John Carpenter to pimp out his name for a check – that had no business in theaters, this low-budget exercise in unredeemable money grubbing should have been lucky to go straight to DVD (where ‘Wrong Turn 2’ will make its debut I might add…a trailer playing before ‘The Hills…’ warns me of this)
With this entry, which picks up shortly after the first one – although the whole look and feel of the first i.e. the tension and atmosphere is now gone – we follow a group of adolescent greenhorn National Guardsmen through a wholly unbelievable training mission for Kandahar where we’re supposed to be duped into thinking that this is a real mission straight out of Black Hawk Down. Lo and behold, this sad group of soldiers fails the mission where we segue into the puzzling Section 16 (a former nuclear testing site where a cannibal mutant community resides) to presumably clean up the area.
That pretty much sums up the bulk of the narrative with the various set piece details belonging to other better films from ‘Aliens’ to ‘The Descent’ where the soldiers find themselves doing battle within a mining tunnel system. The protagonists are completely unmemorable which makes the killings arbitrary. Emotionally, you’re out of the film, so one looks for the next gory killing for any semblance of entertainment or action. At least when the soldiers are dying, you don’t have to listen to their inane dialogue – never a good thing for a film that aims to generate suspense.
The gore is there and works on the level that flipping through ‘Fangoria’ magazine might lead to, a disconnected appreciation of gore f/x, but the killings are mostly ho-hum - with the opening birth sequence being the one exception that may cause me to remember anything about this film tomorrow.
Hills Have Eyes 2 is directed by music video hack Martin Weisz, who makes his film debut here (and God willing his only film). Weisz abandons all the visual panache and slow-burning suspense of Alexandre Aja’s competent remake. He seems to lack the patience and know-how of how to stage an effective scare. Unable to make the film look more expensive than it is by never letting the camera rest, the whole film has a B-film aura to it that Aja’s comparably budgeted predecessor never had.
The effective pacifist ‘Straw Dogs’ dynamic of Craven’s original (and to a lesser extent the remake) is now gone also, replaced by the ridiculous musings of Craven and son’s heavy-handed take on America’s military endeavors where young, loutish soldiers find themselves at odds with an indigenous ‘enemy’ who creep stealthily around a rocky, middle-eastern landscape where they pick off the soldiers one by one.
Friendly fire and the villains being the result of American military action in the first place add to the parallels yet all this does is call light to the fact that Craven was trying to add a weighty subtext to a film that frankly needed to be more concerned about being entertaining first and foremost.
The idea of having soldiers getting their clock cleaned by mutants was not a bad idea, one need look no further than Walter Hill’s excellent ‘Southern Comfort’ to get an idea of how good this film could have been, but it’s obvious that no one involved cared about making a good film. Fox gave Craven 4 weeks to write a script, he and his son hammered it out, Fox greenlit it. BAM! Shoddy movie.
The film is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen and is enhanced for widescreen televisions. Special features include four deleted scenes and an inconsequential alternate ending, a gag reel, two 10-minute featurettes focusing on the special effects and the making of the movie ‘Mutant Attacks’ and ‘Exploring the Hills: Making of…’, respectively, a 12-minute featurette that highlights a graphic novel based on ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ (a mere adaptation of this graphic novel would seem to be the much better take on a continuance of the franchise), a 10 minute “Fox Movie Channel Presents: Life After Film School” interview where three annoying-looking film students ask Craven a few rehearsed questions about the film where all my suspicions are pretty much confirmed and finally a trailer for 2005’s ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ but not, inexplicably, the decent teaser or trailer for ‘Hills 2’.
At its worst, the film is barely tolerable, at its best, just boring. I found almost nothing to recommend in this film despite my love of horror films and exploitation. I don’t feel like I need to go through the film’s faults again for a sum up, but I gotta say that even the cannibal mutants in the film looked bored.
The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Unrated Edition) is now available at Amazon . It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a July 30th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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