Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little look at the newest big studio remake of a classic '70s horror movie, THE HILLS HAVE EYES.
Let me start off by saying that I really like Wes Craven's original film. I like the harshness, the rugged shooting style and the overall feeling of ordinary people overcoming these brutal freaks in the desert. I love the trailer, too, where the 70s trailer voice guy talks about this family "turning anything into a weapon... the family station wagon... the family dog..." Seen that trailer at least a dozen times at the Alamo Drafthouse and have seen the original film a couple of times there as well.
However, THE HILLS HAVE EYES isn't one of those films I feel is untouchable, that any remake is automatically blasphemous. I felt that way about DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and I feel that way now about BLACK CHRISTMAS, just because I know that 70s style of film won't be done justice by modern moviemaking... at least in the hands of those that made FINAL DESTINATION 3.
I also loved Alexandre Aja's HAUTE TENSION (and yes, I am one of those that thinks the ending is retarded and almost negates the whole movie that happened before it). Talk about brutal, inventive and intense. Aja was the right guy to do this movie and the early word was phenomenal as were the advertising materials... trailers, posters, etc.
For those that don't know the original, the film is about a family driving cross country, headed for San Diego. There's a mom and pop (Kathleen Quinlan and Ted Levine), their married daughter (Vinessa Shaw), her husband (Aaron Stanford) and child (some baby). Her siblings, teenaged Emilie de Ravin (Claire from LOST) and Dan Byrd are along as well. Oh, and don't forget the two family pets, German Shepherds named Beauty and Beast. They get stranded in the middle of the desert and some mutated hillbilly people fuck 'em up. Real bad.
I have to say I was a little let down by the movie. It's not bad, mind you. Actually, there are some really great things about the movie. However the film is one rewrite away from being the movie it wants to be.
Aja and long time co-writer Gregory Levasseur's script is almost there. The first act is nothing but repeated exposition. "It's my folks' silver anniversary... Did I mention they've been together 25 years and are road tripping it because it's their anniversary? That's why we came along, it's their anniversary..." and they also set up the fact that the cell phones have no reception about 3 times too many.
Throughout the story, they get most of the movie right. It is a good movie, just not a great one. Every time they seem to find their flow, a character does something incredibly stupid in order to get from one point in the story to another. For instance, there's a character in the movie who has gone through hell, seen many family members die... Is pissed off and is ready to blow the hell out of any of these guys... This character notices that one of the family members' body has been dragged away. The character finds a hillbilly eating the body... and while this character has a gun and catches the hillbilly completely unawares they decide to suddenly make him afraid, not pissed off like this character has been throughout the movie. So, this character gets chased, deciding to shoot only when he's running so fast he can't hit anything... all so there can be a really nice set piece back at the broken trailer.
There's also the classic Jamie Lee move where the hero drops their weapon at the feet of a bad guy they think they've killed.
The good far outweighs the bad, though. Aja isn't afraid to push the limits of the R-rating and the limits of what audiences will take. He waves guns in the faces of babies, he kills off a ton of the family, making you feel like no one is safe... and he kills them in fucked up ways.
The look of the film, like HAUTE TENSION is slightly saturated, but it feels a lot like the 70s-esque cinematography on THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. It's not as flashy as REJECTS, but you get that grainy feeling.
I liked all the characters, despite them doing some really stupid shit. Emilie de Ravin is hot as ever and gets traumatized something awful, Ted Levine is as gruff and badass as he's ever been, Kathleen Quinlan reminded me a lot of Shaun's mom from SHAUN OF THE DEAD in this... very likable, the heart of the family, Vinessa Shaw is also gorgeous and has some great moments and Dan Byrd is solid as the youngest boy with too much responsibility as the movie progresses.
The real star of the movie is Aaron Stanford, though. He doesn't escape the screenwriting problems (in fact he has to suffer through the majority of them), but he has a great arc from pacifist to the vengeful protector of the family unit. I just found out Aaron Stanford also played PYRO in X2 and that is fucking with my mind because he looks so completely different in HILLS HAVE EYES. I expect we'll see many toys made from Stanford's character in this one.
KNB does solid work as always... their dead body work can't be beat. They do up corpses right. However, the decision was made somewhere down the line to make the Hill people more monstrous than this kind of unrelenting evil. There's one fella that has a fight with Stanford that felt very much out of JASON X or something. This big hulking dude that looked like Sloth mixed with Gothmog. This also leads to much, much too much exposition on government bomb testing and how these people were created.
So, in the end I'd call this film a flawed, but still really good horror movie. The only real gripe I have, overall, is just seeing how close this film was to firing on all cylinders... with a little more work this could have been a great movie, not just a really good one. But it is a hard R rated horror film, thank god. One of these days Aja is going to really knock one out of the park. I can't wait for that day, but until then I'm happy to watch him keep putting men on bases, gearing up for his grand slam.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
