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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

The Hills Have Eyes

Jawsus-son Starship

23:16 / 11.03.06

Dear God. I'm about to have a nervous breakdown.

Ok, went to see The Hills have Eyes tonight, and it was all very average. Typical remake horror schlock, typical situations we've all seen exactly 9.3million times, it could have been Texan Chain Saw, could've been Wrong Turn, whatever. It was ok, not spectacular or anything. But dear god, it was so bleak. I did not enjoy any point of this film, it was like a marathon of shit and blood with no end just more shite and blood. So, lets talk about how depraved and bleak this film was, lets talk about the implied sexual violence and how this area, one which is ordinarily ignored by mainstream hollywood horror, has scathing implications for future films, hell lets talk about how I'm now watching the fucking breakfast club to try and bring me down from the curtain rail.

Scared.com/shityshityfilmhasruinedme.html

Math is for suckers!

06:20 / 12.03.06

Wow, you thought it was even ok? I wasn't going in expecting much, just to kill a Saturday evening, but damn. I thought the acting was atrocious, with every character just a bad stereotype. Bitchy daughter, weenie husband, put upon wife, gung-ho dad, etc. I did enjoy parts of the score though, mostly the stuff that sounded like it should've been in a western. I stopped caring about halfway through and just started inventing my own movie in which the dog and the baby crossed the country together, killing mutants as they try to make it home. Think Homeward Bound meets Lone Wolf and Cub meets, I don't know, something with horribly mutated weirdos. But I understand where you're coming from. It was definitely unrelentingly bleak. I didn't even feel for any of the characters except the baby and the dog. And maybe the nice mutant. She wasn't onscreen enough for me to form an opinion. I'd go so far as to say it bordered on nihilism, as the characters just seemed like props to destroy physically and mentally. Even the supposedly triumphant ending is completely negated by the last "gasp, is it over?" shot before the credits. Just all around bad if you ask me. Maybe I'm just insane, but did a lot of it seem very Right Wing propaganda-y (propagandistic?)? The weenie democrat realizes to protect his family he'll need a gun and proactive tactics, the American flag death scene, etc. It just seemed a little to conspicuous to me.

Math is for suckers!

06:21 / 12.03.06

Also, I find it a little funny that I was the first to reply, what with the names and all. Happy coincidence I promise.

07:32 / 12.03.06

I'm glad you mentioned the bleakness of the remake. I remember seeing the original Hills Have Eyes at Hallowe'en on MTV (of all channels) about a decade ago, which was pretty nihilistic and grim but also kind of fun in a twisted, macabre manner. (Wes Craven sure knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.) But I've read a good few reviews of the remake, and I'm not so sure I want to subject myself to it.

The same filmmakers were responsible for Haute Tension, which was so relentlessly dark, the atmosphere so repulsive, it really made me feel anxious and depressed. I got cold sweats and everything. I just wanted to go home and sleep afterwards. And I normally like horror films, especially the gory stuff.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:08 / 12.03.06

I love the trashy late 70s/early 80s "video nasties", as they were called in the UK (where most of them were banned) but The Hills Have Eyes I've always found quite a let-down. I'm interested to see the remake largely because I have little invested in the original. Not that I'm expecting great things, however.

Jawsus-son Starship

10:37 / 12.03.06

i thought the weedy kid brother was an interesting character - i.e. not shit. And (without giving anything to anyone), the people who survive are not the ones I would have expected to be there when the credits rolled.

13:16 / 12.03.06

Without revealing anything... is there a twist ending? (It's just that Aja is so horribly wrong-headed about twist endings. For evidence, see Haute Tension)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:21 / 16.03.06

I'm intrigued now- just got a call from a friend who's gone to see this with her boyfriend, and was calling me from the toilets where she'd gone to hide because it was freaking her out. I'd call that a recommendation (she doesn't normally have a problem with horror movies, though she's not as geeky or gore-crazed about them as I am), considering the original wasn't particularly scary. (Although I may have just been too drunk when I last watched it to give it a fair go- after discussing this with various people, it's been made obvious to me that many people still consider it a classic, so maybe I'll watch it again tonight and see if I'm missing something).

19:51 / 17.03.06

it wouldnt be difficult to make it intensely scary, but i dont see the point. the premise itself is scary. bah. why remake it? too many remakes. all we have are remakes and parodies anymore.

Jack The Bodiless

10:31 / 22.03.06

Yeah, like The Maltese Falcon, Ben Hur, Scarface... creatively bankrupt bastards.

I loved it, personally - but really, what did you expect? It's a remake of a horror movie about a family being violated and butchered by a pack of inbred hillbillies, and their attempts to escape/get revenge. That's it. If you find that kind of movie dull/horrible/whatever, why the friggerty fuck go watch it? If it's because you're bored of a Saturday night, fair enough, but honestly, you had nothing better to do than spend your Saturday night going to see a movie it should have been obvious you wouldn't enjoy? Says more about you than about the movie...

Jawsus-son Starship

10:56 / 22.03.06

I thought I like horror films. Like six months ago I fucking loved the scared adrenalin rush. This, and The Descent, seem to have proved that for some reason I've gone from being a super-stud to a quivering wreck of a man.

But then, thinking back, I did enjoy the film. After I took a stiff drink to calm myself down, and a couple weeks later.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:54 / 22.03.06

I thought it was damn good, actually. (Mind you, I was drunk this time as well...) The characters weren't anywhere near as irritating this time round, which actually made me care a lot more about what was happening to them. The original just tended to induce cries of "you're CRAP hillbilly murderers! You could have had the lot of them in the first ten minutes and I could have fucked off to the pub".

And yes, as Jack says... it's supposed to be horrible. Okay, the title may not quite be at the "Snakes On A Plane" level of doing what it says on the tin, but jeez...

The last horror movie that truly disturbed me was "Audition". "Jesus", I thought, "that was horrible. He did a bloody good job there".

Since the late '80s/early '90s, there's been a tendency to reclassify "horror" as "amusing yet violent stories about attractive young people"- more comedy or adventure than actual balls-out HORROR. Immediately post-Scream, do you think The Exorcist would have been greenlit? I'm not entirely knocking this trend- it did give us Buffy, after all- but for a while it seemed to encompass the entire genre. There seems to be a sense now that people are actually remembering what the word means again.

lord nuneaton savage

14:52 / 22.03.06

I don't say this often but;

STRONG TRUTH

17:33 / 22.03.06

I just want to chime in with:

'Audition' = Fucking horrifying and mean. And I when I watched it deep in a week-long flu and heavily medicated, I actually cried at the bit where the woman's telling our boy her childhood stuff and he's just zoning out.

'The Exorcist' = Funniest goddammed thing committed to film that decade. Could have only been improved by having Audrey Hepburn (early choice for the mum) in it. Seriously: 'You're cunting daughter' is like comedy gold tripled; comedy platinum with chocolate, cherries, hot sex and a monkey sidekick (in the perfect world where those two can go next to each other and still have nothing to do with each other, and no 'left-turn, Clyde' bestiality weirdness).

The previews to new 'The Hills Have Eyes' turned me right off the film. The push of the bombing business seems to immediately detract from the incestual fucked up inbred bastard evil hillbilly psychotics. And, y'know, the original never did a thing for me.

Actually, the cannibal family from 'Six-String Samurai' was more disturbing than any version of 'Hills...' or 'Texas Chainsaw...' ever.

And why do we accept movies with families full of psychos who get everybody, when they're all really shit at the killing? Original 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' takes the long roundabout way to anything.

The barn scene from 'Doom Generation' is more evil and terrifying than any recent American horror film, and that was, primarily and perhaps entirely, a comedy.
Course, I thought much the same of 'High Tension'.

08:13 / 25.03.06

Maybe I'm just insane, but did a lot of it seem very Right Wing propaganda-y (propagandistic?)?

Don't know where you saw that. I'm convinced that these examples you give were meant to be the exact opposite of right-wing propaganda. I mean, they're killed off by mutants living in A-Bomb craters! The whole democrat-gun-thing was probably supposed to be irony but was so poorly executed that it didn't really survive the final cut.

I didn't think this was a good film but hey, what did you expect from a movie that has to be advertised as "the bloodiest film of this generation?". I thought it was quite entertaining in places but then again all too stupid and mean (You have a baseball-bat in your hands, sneak about some mutant asshole who just stole your baby, he doesn't have the faintest clue you're standing right beind him. What can you do? Exactly, you try to sneak away unheard!).

And no, I wouldn't say twist-ending.

PS: I was kinda disappointed they didn't have the balls to show Rubberjohnny's death.

01:17 / 22.06.06

So I bought this on DVD, and watched it for the first time. I can tell you exactly why I loved this movie in about one sentence. I actually cared for the characters and wanted them to live. The same cannot be said for most horror films. I love horror because I love seeing death and gore and people murdered maimed and killed. But with this film, I wanted everybody to survive. Everybody. Man, Buffalo Bill was set on fire! That was horrible! So bleak, so brutal, so emotional. I loved it.

Spoilers to follow

Also, it has become a horror film cliche that if a character loses some fingers, they are going to survive: House of Wax (2005), Hostel, and this film. As soon as CellphoneSalesman got his fingers chopped, I was sure of his survival. And thank heavens for it.

Haus of Mystery

08:47 / 22.06.06

I thought it was a tad above most pointless remakes, but essentially tedious. And not scary. Had a couple of nice moments for the gorehound in me (axe to the head) and some nice Cursed Erath style mutants (the guy with the face cage and the shotgun), but basically it just bored me. Where was the tension? I found myself looking around the cinema, and shifting in my seat, which is always a sign something's wrong. If you've got mutant cannibals in a film and you're still boring me, then you're fucking up.
Last decent modern horror i really enjoyed was Hostel. Not perfect by any means, but it moved at a fine pace, and had me on the edge of my seat a good few times. Just a good, trashy exploitation flick, made by someone who knows the basic mechanics of scare cinema.
Agree on 'the Descent' - top British horror, and head and shoulders above the piffling 'Dog Soldiers' (I know it's the same director), and the incredibly overrated (and shit) '28 Days Later'.

19:09 / 24.06.06

(You have a baseball-bat in your hands, sneak about some mutant asshole who just stole your baby, he doesn't have the faintest clue you're standing right beind him. What can you do? Exactly, you try to sneak away unheard!).

Not only that, but you have a dog that knows a fuck of a whole lot more about The Fine Art of Killing Mutants than you do, and you keep it on a leash. And when you have a trailer in which you will eventually have to spend an indefinite number of cold desert nights, be sure and blow that thing up.

The absolute worst thing about going to see this film: There was a couple sitting a few rows in front of us with three small children in tow. They left after the rape scene-that was when the youngest (about a year old) had decided she had had enough and began to cry uncontrollably. What kind of sick fuck brings his kids to see something like this?

10:08 / 25.06.06

WARNING! SPOILERS!

This movie disappointed me because it essentially could have been so much better. It could have decided to part from cliche, and instead went for every one of them. You have a young kid who's father has supposedly taught him how to shoot, who manages to waste every bullet that he has, and snakes out hysterically through the ENTIRE film. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if somewhere in the movie he found his mettle and actually used some of that firearm training? No, instead, we have victims stumble through the whole film, with a couple of them lucking out in spite of themselves.

And in the end, when Ruby the nice mutant hands the baby to the father, we have her running toward lizard and going over the cliff with him. The fact that lizard is actually up after getting hit with 3 shotgun blasts is cliche in itself. That Ruby sacrifices herself is even more cliche. How much better it could have been if the father looked at her after she handed him the baby, obviously desiring to kill her, and decided to take her hand and lead her out of the hell that she had been living in, thus proving that he had retained his humanity after killing a slew of mutants.

Nothing worse than a movie that comes up short on a ton of opportunties.

10:21 / 25.06.06

For me, the most notable aspect of this film is its title, which has evolved into an adjective of sorts among a small subgroup of not-like-in-ER medics - as in "have you seen your 10.30 patient? Bit Hills Have Eyes...".

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:32 / 25.06.06

As in total inbreed mutant, or as in puddle o'gore?

10:45 / 25.06.06

As in "looks a bit syndromal".

10:46 / 25.06.06

Which is the first, I guess. Like they might've named their daugher Consanguinity.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:06 / 25.06.06

I have now, in my life, known two people who look exactly like Michael Berryman. Both became known as "Hills Have Eyes Guy" when their actual names slipped the memory.