Last night I went to see The Hills Have Eyes. It’s times like that when I wonder if it’s normal to want to scare yourself witless for an hour or so. Mini-review after the jump.
It’s about a family stranded in the middle of the New Mexico desert being preyed on by a bunch of mutated psychopaths. There’s some moralising about nuclear testing and a bit of politics thrown in but it’s really just about normal people cut off from the outside world and surrounded by murderous weirdos.
The first half gets the setup out the way and does an excellent job of building and keeping the tension as the family remain unaware of what’s going on around them. The second half is still tense but with more slasher elements thrown in as the pace quickens and the blood and body parts mount up. There’s a few disturbing sequences, particularly when the mutants first attack the trailer, and some pretty harsh violence but I’m not sure it’s that much worse than anything else I’ve seen recently despite what some other reviewers have said (i.e. Quint over at Ain’t it Cool News).
It’s got a few problems, the last 20 minutes or so don’t seem as strong as the rest of the film and some parts struck me as more cartoony I think they were aiming for. The worst problem is a common horror flaw: the heroes are a sensible enough lot until the plot requires them to do something stupid to move things along. There’s one particularly stupid moment and you could tell the entire audience thought it was a boneheaded move and knew what was coming next.
Having said that it has many redeeming features, the plot isn’t as predictable as you might think and the look and feel of the film is perfectly matched to the pace and the atmosphere. It’s easily one of the best horrors I’ve seen in the last couple of years, The Descent is still my favorite recent horror but this is well worth going to see if you like those sort of things.
If you don’t like those sort of films then probably best to avoid it …