The Hills Have Eyes
The Hills Have Eyes
R | 10 March 2006 (USA)
The Hills Have Eyes Trailers

Based on Wes Craven's 1977 suspenseful cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carter family soon realizes the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.

Reviews
RyothChatty ridiculous rating
StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
bradleygranz The hill have eyes is a horror movie i really enjoy joy this it scary it has a cool fight scene a great storyline i love the hills have eyes so much
Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki Note for note remake of the 1977 film, as a family gets lost, stranded in the middle of the desert, preyed upon by mutant killers.Expectedly colour-saturated, high contrast horror film follows the original film so closely, and even uses strikingly similar dialogue, that it becomes entirely predictable, and it reduces the plot merely to gross- out torture-porn. The film unwisely reverses the cautionary gas station attendant and turns him into another generic ambusher, telling this family to take some unmarked dirt path, instead of staying " on the main road ", leading them straight to the killers' traps.The killers from the original film were terrifying, with hardly any make- up effects, and they were actual characters, with personalities, and oddly likable quirks ( as demonstrated by some of their one-liners directed at each other ) , but here, the killers are just gross looking, and they have none of the personality or presence of the original's killers, having been reduced to generic, CGI, cardboard cutout killers.Oddly enough, the Nevada desert locations in the original film were haunting, prehistoric, unearthly looking, but the Ouarzazate desert landscape in this film looks like just that: a desert. Completely lacking the atmosphere in setting.This remake does have its moments, just not enough of them. Best scene: Doug ( whose character endures enough injuries to kill several people ) discovering the nuclear blast crater.
Messi Manolis It always begins with the Wrong Gas Station. In real life, as I pointed out in my review of a previous Wrong Gas Station movie, most gas stations are clean, well-lighted places, where you can buy not only gasoline but groceries, clothes, electronic devices, Jeff Foxworthy CDs and a full line of Harley merchandise. In horror movies, however, the only gas station in the world is located on a desolate road in a godforsaken backwater. It is staffed by a degenerate who shuffles out in his coveralls and runs through a disgusting repertory of scratches, splittings, chewing, twitching and leering, while thoughtfully shifting mucus up and down his throat.The clean-cut heroes of the movie, be they a family on vacation, newlyweds, college students or backpackers, all have one thing in common. They believe everything this man tells them, especially when he suggests they turn left on the unpaved road for a shortcut. Does it ever occur to them that in this desolate wasteland with only one main road, it must be the road to stay on if they ever again want to use their cell phones?No. It does not. They take the fatal detour, and find themselves the prey of demented mutant incestuous cannibalistic gnashing slobbers, who carry pickaxes the way other people carry umbrellas. They occupy junkyards, towns made entirely of wax, nuclear waste zones and Motel Hell ("It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters"). That is the destiny that befalls a vacationing family in "The Hills Have Eyes," which is a very loose remake of Wes Craven's 1977 movie of the same name.The Carter family is on vacation. Dad (Ted Levine) is a retired detective who plans to become a security guard. Mom is sane, lovable Kathleen Quinlan. A daughter and son in law (Vinessa Shaw and Aaron Stanford) have a newborn babe. There are also two other Carter children (Dan Byrd and Emilie DE Ravin), and two dogs, named Beauty and Beast. They have hitched up an Airstream and are on a jolly family vacation through the test zones where 331 atmospheric nuclear tests took place in the 1950s and 1960s.After the Carters turn down the wrong road, they're fair game for the people who are the eyes of the hills. These are descendants of miners who refused to leave their homes when the government ordered them away from the testing grounds. They hid in mines, drank radioactive water, reproduced with their damaged DNA, and brought forth mutants, who live by eating trapped tourists. There is an old bomb crater filled with the abandoned cars and trucks of their countless victims. It is curiously touching, in the middle of this polluted wasteland, to see a car that was towing a boat that still has its outboard motor attached. No one has explained what the boat was seeking at that altitude.The plot is easily guessed. Ominous events occur. The family makes the fatal mistake of splitting up; dad walks back to the Wrong Gas Station, while the dogs bark like crazy and run away, and young Bobby chases them into the hills. Meanwhile, the mutants entertain themselves by passing in front of the camera so quickly you can't really see them, while we hear a loud sound, halfway between a swatch and a swatch, on the soundtrack. Just as a knife in a slasher movie can make a sharpening sound just because it exists, so do mutants make swatches and swatches when they run in front of cameras.I received some appalled feedback when I praised Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" (2005), but I admired two things about it: (1) It desired to entertain and not merely to sicken, and (2) its depraved killers were individuals with personalities, histories and motives. "The Hills Have Eyes" finds an intriguing setting in "typical" fake towns built by the government, populated by mannequins and intended to be destroyed by nuclear blasts. But its mutants are simply engines of destruction. There is a misshapen creature who coordinates attacks with a walkies-talkie; I would have liked to know more about him, but no luck.Nobody in this movie has ever seen a Dead Teenager Movie, and so they don't know (1) you never go off alone, (2) you especially never go off alone at night, and (3) you never follow your dog when it races off barking insanely, because you have more sense than the dog. It is also possibly not a good idea to walk back to the Wrong Gas Station to get help from the degenerate who sent you on the detour in the first place.It is not faulty logic that derails "The Hills have Eyes," however, but faulty drama. The movie is a one-trick pony. We have the eaters and the ea-tees, and they will follow their destinies until some kind of desperate denouement, possibly followed by a final shot showing that It's Not Really Over, and there will be a "The Hills Have Eyes II." Of course, there was already "The Hills Have Eyes II" (1985), but then again there was "The Hills Have Eyes" (1977) and that didn't stop them. Maybe this will. Isn't it pretty to think so.
bowmanblue Yes, 'The Hills Have Eyes' is a good film. Doesn't that mean it's a classic? No, it's a remake. And, seeing as – seemingly – every film needs to remade/re-imagined or have Spock home back in time to create an alternate timeline, most of them fall nowhere near 'okay.' Therefore, remakes need to be judged through more lenient eyes, so it may not be a good film, but it's a damn fine remake! The plot from the 1977 original remains the same – a nice, happy family gets stranded in the middle of an American desert and is slowly picked off by the local mutants who generally want them dead for varying reasons. Nice and simple. The family must therefore fight to survive.And that's all there is to it. With a plot so simple, it could be great or it could fail. Luckily, the cast of actors save it. They work pretty well together and generally annoy each other (as most real families do). They bicker, they moan and get at each other, but ultimately come together to overcome a greater threat. Plus, most importantly, they don't make too many ridiculous judgements meaning they're the architects of their own demises. There's nothing worse than yelling at the TV screen to the protagonist because they're making ridiculous calls which simply further the plot. Here, the family do basically what we'd do in such a grisly situation.And it is grisly. First of all there is gore (and strong violence) aplenty. Not only are the kills pretty extreme, but the make-up on the mutated locals is suitably gruesome. 'The Hills Have Eyes' certainly isn't for everyone. Its strong gore and adult content will certainly put some people off. It's not for the squeamish, but if you like your horror films brutal and violent then this one is for you.