Aja and Levasseur began by reworking the original HILLS script, pulling it into 2006. Aja remembers, “Wes was a perfect gentleman and said, ‘I already made my movie and I really respect your vision so I want you to make your own movie.’ Instead, he asked us to find a new approach to the original. I think it was just a week later when we came in with some ideas about working the nuclear testing into the fabric of the story. “Aja and Levasseur’s vision for the nuclear test site – with its eerie facsimile villages, family mannequins, and radiated ruins – and for the authentic radiation-caused deformities of the mutant family began to imbue a whole new level of gnawing realism to the already shocking story. Comments Craven: “The theme of nuclear radiation on humans is very timely. The general population today has little idea how dangerous nuclear fallout can be.”
Another aspect of HILLS that intrigued Levasseur was the brief but extremely eventful time span the film covers. “When you’re dealing with a very short amount of time – just one night of action -- you get a very interesting arc,” says Levasseur. “You start at a point where everyone is clean and good looking and you finish with all the clothes distressed, covered with blood, and the people wounded, barely alive. The evolution is really big and I think it’s very exciting whenever there is such a big contrast between the beginning and the end of the film.”
From there the story evolved over a period of months, as Aja and Levasseur dove deeper and deeper into the film’s alarming and disquieting themes. “Our version is a remake, but at the same time it is more about fear, more about a real struggle for survival, more about a family facing something terrifyingly unknown. The object of making a horror movie is always to do your best to scare the audience, so I wanted this version to be even scarier and gorier than the original.”
For Aja, the key was finding the right mix between originality and homage, between updating and expanding the original setup of HILLS without in any way diluting its uncompromised raw energy. “We disliked many of the remakes of classic horror films made in the last few years because they’re too much like music videos, too clean and not as scary and graphic as they should be,” Aja explains. “With this film, we were able to make exactly the movie that we wanted to see.”
Aja was particularly pleased to be directing his very first American production. “For me, going to Hollywood is a dream come true,” he says. “With the kinds of films we are making, being French isn’t important. If you know how to frighten people, you can do it in any language.”
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