A large part of the thrill of THE HILLS HAVE EYES is its extraordinary visual energy – as it creates a fully realized desert environment so lonely, desolate and ravaged by atomic testing that it makes perfect sense as the hiding place for a ravenous clan of ferocious mutants. For director Alexandre Aja, forging a sharp look and visceral feeling of mounting tension for the film were always a priority – which is why he recruited cinematographer Maxime Alexandre, whose kinetically shocking work on HIGH TENSION had previously garnered acclaim, to the film. Alexandre’s close, organic working relationship with Aja and Levasseur was key to the film’s visual style.
“We’ve developed a real shorthand with Maxime – and we know we can 100 percent rely on his cinematography and will always be pleased,” says Aja. Adds Marianne Maddalena: “Maxime is an incredible collaborator with Alex and Greg, and he brings both a tension and intensity to their vision that is both original and effective.”
Alexandre was very familiar with the gritty, handheld look of Wes Craven’s micro-budget original, but knew that Aja and Levasseur would want to bring their own more explosive point-of-view to it. “I think Alex and Greg saw a chance to bring a very modern touch to what is a classic horror story. It’s a story people know already so what’s new is this style that we bring to it,” he says.
Alexandre faced numerous challenges in his work on the film, not the least of which was trying to shoot a film of escalating fear and gruesome revelations not in the usual darkness of most horror stories but in the blindingly bright light of the desert sun. “A big part of this movie takes place in daylight and that’s not easy at all when you are trying to create a sense of the unknown,” he says. “We wanted to create an atmosphere in which any given rock or piece of brush could be hiding something terrifying behind it. It was an exciting challenge. For me the interesting part was finding ways to communicate fear, and painting a haunting portrait with light.”
Further bringing the desert world of the mutants to life is the work of production designer Joseph Nemec, whose credits include the tornado-whipped sets of TWISTER and the thriller PATRIOT GAMES. Nemec based his designs for THE HILLS HAVE EYES on specific emotions that he and the filmmakers hoped to evoke scene by scene. “For each individual scene, I would sit down with Alex and Greg to talk first and foremost about what we wanted the audience to feel – fear, compassion, anxiety, et cetera -- and then we built the designs from those discussions,” he explains. “The common characteristic all three of us agreed upon is that the key to everything would be found in the details. It didn’t matter whether we were talking about a single prop, the overall set dressing, the architectural detailing or the natural backgrounds -- whatever it was, we all were focused on making the smallest details viscerally real and true.”
Nemec worked especially closely with the filmmakers in designing the Carter family trailer, which serves as their only place of refuge throughout the first part of the film, as terror slowly builds to a crescendo around them. Some four different versions of the trailer were used during filming, including three actual vintage Airstreams wrangled for the film and one mock-up of the trailer interior, built 33 percent bigger to allow extra space for the camera to maneuver at wild angles in the scenes where the trailer is invaded by mutants.
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