The Hills Have Eyes (2006) — Film Review
My father’s been hounding me to watch The Hills Have Eyes since it came out in 2006. A favorite film of his; he was sure I’d love it too. I enjoyed the original movie immensely but didn’t love the sequel. Now, decades later, the film gets a remake. Lucky for us, Wes Craven produced this second time around, so all is not lost. My issues with the original movie were that the premise was good but not gory, graphic, or scary enough. This remake resolves those issues. There’s more blood and screams, but underneath it, all is still the same great premise.
Like the original, The Hills Have Eyes follows a family caravan across the country. Their cars break down in the middle of nowhere, leaving them to fend for themselves against the creepy people that live in the hills. In the original, the cannibals in the hills are merely inbred and unintelligent. In this remake, the cannibals are deformed from living in a nuclear testing site. This change alone upped the fear and made the villains a much more formidable pack. What’s great about this movie is it takes all the good things from the original and builds upon them. It doesn’t change anything drastically or screw up a good thing. Many of the scenes in this film are exact reproductions of the original.
While the cannibals are creepy and scary, the biggest villain in this film continues to be the feeling of helplessness. This family has no resources, cell…
