The Hills Have Eyes II
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When the remake of The Hills Have Eyes came out exactly one year ago, I was not one of its supporters. However, a strange feeling overcame me while I was watching The Hills Have Eyes II...I started to feel nostalgic for the earlier film. The previous film wasn't anything great. Heck, it wasn't even a good movie. But, at least it attempted to tell something that resembled a story. The sequel looks like some special effects make up artists were bored, so they grabbed some young actors, stuck them in the middle of the desert in military uniforms, and then proceeded to splatter them with fake blood and gore for the rest of the time. Completely lacking the bare necessities that even the slightest of horror films must have, The Hills Have Eyes II is a film experience so banal I would have preferred to stare at a blank screen for 90 minutes.
There's not much plot to be found here, not that it really matters anyway. A group of young, fresh-faced army recruits find themselves trapped in the desert community inhabited by those mutant cannibals who like to pick off anyone unfortunate enough to wander into their territory. The movie doesn't bother establishing characters. The soldiers have names, but pretty much they are identified simply by their skin and hair color. Other than that, they all talk, behave, and generally think exactly the same except for a few minor personality quirks. The mutants aren't much better. They lurk about in dark caves, popping out and grabbing people when they can, and then they disappear. There is one mutant late in the film who seems different from the others, and actually tries to help the soldiers. Who he is and why he helps them, the movie keeps to itself. Not that we're supposed to care, mind you. This movie exists simply so that the special effects artists can add another movie title to their resumes. Fake blood is splattered on the young cast at every opportunity, the actors forced to play the cannibals are covered head to foot in creature make up and dried mud, and none of it matters.
None of it matters because The Hills Have Eyes II is about absolutely nothing. It doesn't frighten and it does not excite in even the slightest. All it does is establish a sense of wonder, but for all the wrong reasons. I wondered how the filmmakers could have this much contempt for their audience. Here is a movie that accomplishes not one thing, and expects us to be entertained by it. The actors in this movie don't even look like they were having a good time making it. They look hot, miserable, and depressed. And that's long before they start getting killed off by the mutants. They're just standing out there in the desert, throwing obscenities and military dialogue cliches at each other, waiting for their death scene so they can cash their paycheck and leave. The entire movie almost comes across as a cruel prank that's being played on the cast. They eventually leave the desert, and get to spend the entire second half of the movie in a series of caves. The movie then becomes a rip off of the British horror film, The Descent. Problem is, it doesn't rip off that movie very well. It was then that I found myself nostalgic not only for the previous Hills movie, but also for The Descent as well. All this movie accomplishes is making us wish we were watching something else.
What perhaps stuns me the most is that this film was co-written by Wes Craven, who wrote the original 1977 movie that inspired the remake. Amusingly enough, he wrote and directed a sequel to the original movie back in 1985. That film is not looked on too fondly by genre fans. This sequel is not a remake of his earlier one, although they both share the same title. So, in other words, Wes Craven has had two chances to do a Part 2, and has failed both times. This proves that either Mr. Craven is terribly unlucky, or he really doesn't have a clue. Given the fact that Craven was involved with last year's terrible remake of the Japanese horror film, Pulse, I'm leaning more toward the second option. Of course, he doesn't deserve all the blame this time around. His son, Jonathan Craven, co-wrote the screenplay alongside him. Nice to know he's passing on his proud legacy. In the director's seat, we have music video and commercial director Martin Weisz making his theatrical film debut. If this movie proves anything, he's got a long way to go. Many of the scenes in the desert have no inspiration or uniqueness to them. He's just filming people standing around in a wasteland. When the action switches to the caves, he often forgets that audiences like to be able to see what's going on, and stages his sequences so dark that many of the scenes come across as being almost indescribable.
There's really not much that needs to be said about The Hills Have Eyes II, other than it cheats us out of seeing a potentially very cool death. At one point, the soldiers come across a mutilated body. They notice that there's something stuck right in the poor victim's head, and when they pull it out, it is revealed to be a leather wallet. The fact that this man was killed by having a wallet slammed into his head with such extreme force that it literally cracked into his skull would certainly be something I would have liked to have seen. I kept on trying to picture the man's final moments in my head, and I just couldn't do it. Leave it to this movie to deprive us of the one thing that could have been remotely interesting.
When the remake of The Hills Have Eyes came out exactly one year ago, I was not one of its supporters. However, a strange feeling overcame me while I was watching The Hills Have Eyes II...I started to feel nostalgic for the earlier film. The previous film wasn't anything great. Heck, it wasn't even a good movie. But, at least it attempted to tell something that resembled a story. The sequel looks like some special effects make up artists were bored, so they grabbed some young actors, stuck them in the middle of the desert in military uniforms, and then proceeded to splatter them with fake blood and gore for the rest of the time. Completely lacking the bare necessities that even the slightest of horror films must have, The Hills Have Eyes II is a film experience so banal I would have preferred to stare at a blank screen for 90 minutes.
There's not much plot to be found here, not that it really matters anyway. A group of young, fresh-faced army recruits find themselves trapped in the desert community inhabited by those mutant cannibals who like to pick off anyone unfortunate enough to wander into their territory. The movie doesn't bother establishing characters. The soldiers have names, but pretty much they are identified simply by their skin and hair color. Other than that, they all talk, behave, and generally think exactly the same except for a few minor personality quirks. The mutants aren't much better. They lurk about in dark caves, popping out and grabbing people when they can, and then they disappear. There is one mutant late in the film who seems different from the others, and actually tries to help the soldiers. Who he is and why he helps them, the movie keeps to itself. Not that we're supposed to care, mind you. This movie exists simply so that the special effects artists can add another movie title to their resumes. Fake blood is splattered on the young cast at every opportunity, the actors forced to play the cannibals are covered head to foot in creature make up and dried mud, and none of it matters.
None of it matters because The Hills Have Eyes II is about absolutely nothing. It doesn't frighten and it does not excite in even the slightest. All it does is establish a sense of wonder, but for all the wrong reasons. I wondered how the filmmakers could have this much contempt for their audience. Here is a movie that accomplishes not one thing, and expects us to be entertained by it. The actors in this movie don't even look like they were having a good time making it. They look hot, miserable, and depressed. And that's long before they start getting killed off by the mutants. They're just standing out there in the desert, throwing obscenities and military dialogue cliches at each other, waiting for their death scene so they can cash their paycheck and leave. The entire movie almost comes across as a cruel prank that's being played on the cast. They eventually leave the desert, and get to spend the entire second half of the movie in a series of caves. The movie then becomes a rip off of the British horror film, The Descent. Problem is, it doesn't rip off that movie very well. It was then that I found myself nostalgic not only for the previous Hills movie, but also for The Descent as well. All this movie accomplishes is making us wish we were watching something else.
What perhaps stuns me the most is that this film was co-written by Wes Craven, who wrote the original 1977 movie that inspired the remake. Amusingly enough, he wrote and directed a sequel to the original movie back in 1985. That film is not looked on too fondly by genre fans. This sequel is not a remake of his earlier one, although they both share the same title. So, in other words, Wes Craven has had two chances to do a Part 2, and has failed both times. This proves that either Mr. Craven is terribly unlucky, or he really doesn't have a clue. Given the fact that Craven was involved with last year's terrible remake of the Japanese horror film, Pulse, I'm leaning more toward the second option. Of course, he doesn't deserve all the blame this time around. His son, Jonathan Craven, co-wrote the screenplay alongside him. Nice to know he's passing on his proud legacy. In the director's seat, we have music video and commercial director Martin Weisz making his theatrical film debut. If this movie proves anything, he's got a long way to go. Many of the scenes in the desert have no inspiration or uniqueness to them. He's just filming people standing around in a wasteland. When the action switches to the caves, he often forgets that audiences like to be able to see what's going on, and stages his sequences so dark that many of the scenes come across as being almost indescribable.There's really not much that needs to be said about The Hills Have Eyes II, other than it cheats us out of seeing a potentially very cool death. At one point, the soldiers come across a mutilated body. They notice that there's something stuck right in the poor victim's head, and when they pull it out, it is revealed to be a leather wallet. The fact that this man was killed by having a wallet slammed into his head with such extreme force that it literally cracked into his skull would certainly be something I would have liked to have seen. I kept on trying to picture the man's final moments in my head, and I just couldn't do it. Leave it to this movie to deprive us of the one thing that could have been remotely interesting.
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