Director: Alexandre Aja
Cast: Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Emilie de Ravin
Screenplay: Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur (based on the screenplay by Wes Craven)
Rated "R" for violence, language and a rape scene.

I was one of those people who really enjoyed… Well, enjoyed is not quite the right work, more like didn't hate a whole lot.. the original "Hills Have Eyes".
It was a film that made me most hesitant about driving across the desert. Patti and I drove a car from Modesto to San Antonio, Texas one time. The car broke down in the middle of the Arizona desert. At 2:30 in the morning, and trust when I say I was a lot less worried about the car then I was killer mutants with a taste for human flesh.
Well, in Alexandre Aja's remake of the 1977 Wes Craven film, the characters beat, punch, kick, blow-up, chop and chew each other until the last drop of blood and gore seem to be drained from the victim.
It is easy to see elements of Aja's High Tension, and that audience is the one he seems to be aiming for with the new "Hills Have Eyes."
We have an extended family, made up of retired cop dad, still attractive Christian mother, sultry/sluttish teenage daughter, hormone laced teenage son, older married daughter, democratic and liberal son-in -law, an infant named Catherine and two beautiful German Shepard's named Beauty and Beast.
Driving across country with an SUV pulling a camper trailer through the back roads and hill country of the barren New Mexico desert, they take a short cut after being given a tip by an old man at a gas station, which leads them to a whole 'nother destination as we used to say down home.
Yes, you have seen this idea before; "Wrong Turn" and numerous other films have made use of it. Guess who did it best, if not first? That's right, Wes Craven, the same guy who brought you Freddy Krueger brought cannibal mutants in the desert into our hearts and minds.
But since this is a remake, most of the tension is gone for us 'older folks' and you young 'un's have no idea about movie tension so gore, exploding heads and massive gunshot injuries had to be included.
Here, the plot is pretty simple; survive or be eaten. And while it isn't original, and there is not a lot of tension, it is still fun to watch a 'horror' film done by a real film-maker and not a rock star who only knows from shock.
Where some films over the last couple of years have depended on the ability of the scene to 'stun' or shock the sensibilities of the viewer, the shocks used in "Hills" are there for a reason and a purpose. They are setting up each following scene, and even though you as the viewer know what is coming because of other films, when it happens you are still jolted in your seat a little.
And it is nice to have that jolt instead of a desire to puke.
Aja doesn't bother to tell us much about each character, instead putting us into the family almost from the start. Instead of finding out all about them in some heady discussion, we instead get to see 'civilized man' fight 'savage man' and get to question which is which by the end.
The film is very fast moving, seldom giving the audience a chance to catch it's breath before being dropped back into the action once more.
Were there problems with the film? Certainly, but they had little to do with what Aja wanted to present and that was a violent look at the way each of us looks at the world around us and what we are willing to do if someone we love is placed in danger.
The first real violence in the film is rough. I don't like rapists, and I don't like rape scenes in movies. Here, the scene is almost a pyramid of carnage and terror.
And from there it just builds and builds until the bloody (literally) end. We have severed heads, fingers, axes, guns, knives, a nice deep-freeze, and mutants who like daytime TV. Well, there is part of the problem.
And the dog was great. Go BEAST!!! This dog makes a lot of human heroes look lame. Sorry guys, but Beast just never gave up.

And thus ends the movie review section for Hills Have Eyes.
We now move into the social commentary section so those of you who hate this type of crap are free to move along. Go read my review of "V" For Vendetta.
This film has several parallels to America and our society today. The first is the most obvious, taking a cell-phone salesman and turning him into a Rambo type killer and comparing that to our current "War on Terror". Much like the cell-phone salesman, we don't expect terror to come into our home, kill our family or rape our women. But when it does how simple is it for even the most civilized among us to strike back at those attacking us? Just how far apart are we from the savages that we can quickly become like them?
Another thought that came to me along the same lines is that this same "War" we are fighting is one we are being told over and over again by all the 'experts' that we just can't win. And I tend to agree; much like the salesman here, when we continue to fight a war based on defense only, we can't win. He took the war to them, to their homes and where they live. And that is what we are going to have to do as well or we will continue to lose Allied service men and women in a war that is (so far) being fought to make rich people richer.
And then we come to my biggest problem. And I think I hate the fact that so many others see this in us more then anything.
The mutants are the result of genetic mutation that have been affected by the radiation from multiple underground and above ground Atomic and Nuclear tests run by the U.S. military back in the 40's through the 60's.
Now, these people were told to move. They were helped to move. But some of them stayed behind, hiding in caves and mines. And when they came out, they blamed their situation on the U.S. and on 'normal' people who came through the desert, feasting on them and living off the profit of the goods they stole from the dead.
As usual, some folks simply won't accept the blame for screwing up their lives or the lives of their children and grandchildren because of their stupidity, arrogance or pride.
They are the same type who live off welfare because they don't have to work, and there is only a little difference between what they would have earned and what is given to them. They have no self esteem, no understanding that they have a responsibility to others besides themselves.
But, this film won't be looked at as a film about 'social problems.' It won't be pointed at as a visual lesson for our culture or a finger pointed at politicians who keep making promises they later refuse to keep. It will be simply another silly horror film.
And American and Allied troops will continue to die in a war we won't fight offensively, terrorists will continue to strike at Allied and Western society and the nation of Israel and the elected officials will keep handing money out for doing nothing, while lining their own pockets, and we will wonder why our school system is breaking down with no one learning anything.
Oh, well. Maybe someday Micheal Moore will do a film about something other then Christian, conservative, republicans being the bad guys and people will start to want something done.
And Pigs will fly.