From his very first thoughts of remaking THE HILLS HAVE EYES, Alexandre Aja knew that the most essential component to bringing the audience directly into the Carter family’s terrifying survival ordeal would be bringing to life a fully believable and realistic group of modern characters. It was the only way to draw the audience viscerally into the experience, to fray their nerves and get their adrenaline pumping overtime, as if they were watching their own friends in the throes of deepest darkness. So once the screenplay was completed, the focus quickly turned intensively to casting.
“Our concept was always to make the movie feel as real as it possibly could feel,” says Aja. “So during casting, we looked for actors who could bring these characters to life in a very natural and authentic way. The rule from the beginning was to stay away from any campy actors and from big names, people with too much personality and star appeal so that you just see the actor, rather than relating to the character.”
The casting process began with the central figure of authority in the Carter family: “Big Bob,” the gruff yet loving patriarch and newly retired cop, who starts the trip confident in the idea that he’s a match for any trouble the family might encounter on the road. To play Bob, Aja sought out an actor who could evoke both a familiar macho swagger and the deeper essence of a caring family man – all in just a few key sentences of dialogue. He found what he was looking for in veteran actor Ted Levine, whose previous roles include Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, in the hit television series “Monk” and Buffalo Bill in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.
Levine seemed to exude the quintessential “American dad” quality. Says Aja: “Ted Levine matched the qualities of Big Bob point per point and I knew he would bring even more depth and nuance to the character on screen.”
A fan of HIGH TENSION, Levine was intrigued by the role of Big Bob, despite all the horrible events it would entail, including being burned at the stake. Perhaps because it marks such a departure from the typical role of the villain in which Levine is often cast, he immediately felt sympathetically drawn to Bob. “I liked this character a lot because he’s very real and very normal, which I think can actually be one of the biggest challenges for an actor to play,” says Levine. “It can be kind of easy to play evil people because you can always justify their behavior. But to play a straight forward guy like Bob dealing with a set of moral ethics in the face of total fear was very interesting to me.”
Bob’s stoic faith in himself, even when he discovers what the family has stumbled into, was also attractive to Levine. He continues: “Bob is the kind of guy who always believes that if you’ve got lemons you make lemonade. He’s a can-do guy forging ahead after his retirement and . . . now this happens. He’s sort of a tragic character in that way.”
Once he read the screenplay, Levine felt certain that THE HILLS HAVE EYES would appeal to anyone who appreciates the cutting edge in the horror-thriller genre. “This is one of those movies that tickles that part of your brain that deals with the conflicting emotions of desire and fear,” he observes. “I think people will be very scared by the Carter family’s journey.”
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