|
|
The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)
 Jonathan Craven teamed up with his father, horror favorite Wes Craven to write “The Hills Have Eyes 2”. I didn’t know what to expect from this one. I thought the 2006 remake of the original “The Hills Have Eyes” was unlike a lot the recent horror remakes in that it was actually done well enough to justify the re-imagining of the original. Now we have the sequel.
The film doesn’t waste any time getting right to the horror. The opening scene was a real shocker, and set the tone for the whole film. I’m surprised some of it made it past the MPAA for the film’s “R” rating (the moon must have been aligned with Venus during the MPAA’s voodoo ritual they use to bestow ratings on films) but I’m not complaining. It does make me wonder what they’ll dig up for the sure-to-be-released “unrated” DVD to follow.
After the initial horror of the opening credits, the audience isn’t give much time to catch their breath. We are dropped into the middle of an army mission to install sensors in the abandoned mines and bunkers of “Sector 16” the area of the Army’s Yucca Flats test facility in Nevada where the murderous dwellers from the first film are believed to live (mutated of course by the atomic testing done there). Apparently the Army went in and cleaned them out after the murders from the first film, and now they want to have sensors to monitor the area better.
The only problem is that the Army’s eradication of the mutants was no more effective than their current work on the insurgents in Iraq. So more gruesome deaths and we’re still in the first 10 minutes! Now a group of National Guard trainees have been sent to deliver supplies to the unit doing the sensor installation. This is where the film switches from rapid fire gore to a well paced tension build as the mutants stalk the untrained guard unit.
Jonathan and Wes Craven did a great job writing a story that doesn’t slack off its pace but also doesn’t go over the top just for the sake of it. The mutants are horrific and original and the use of the landscape to create fear both above and below ground is first rate. I was also pleased to see that the film doesn’t follow the recent trend of “torture horror” that has been popular in a number of recent films such as “Hostel”, “Touristas”, and the “Saw” films. I don’t have an issue with that kind of horror, but it’s nice to have some more traditional straight forward, in your face horror (although you wouldn’t want to be a woman caught by the mutants, they need breeding stock…).
I recommend “The Hills Have Eyes 2”. The film is very straight-forward, old school horror. There’s plenty of gore and also lots of thrills in the film and it does breath a lot of fresh life into some clichéd situations. Check out “The Hills Have Eyes 2” before the MPAA realizes what they let loose with an “R”.
|
|