Boasting an upgrade in production values, The Hills Have Eyes should please new-generation horror fans without offending devotees of Wes Craven's original version from 1977. There's still something to be said for the gritty shock value of Craven's low-budget original, made at a time when horror had been relegated to the pop-cultural ghetto, mostly below the radar of major Hollywood studios. With the box-office resurgence of horror in the new millennium--and the genre's lucrative popularity among the all-important teen demographic--it's only fitting that French director Alexandre Aja should follow up his international hit High Tension with a similarly brutal American debut to boost his Hollywood street-cred. Working with cowriter Gregory Levasseur, Aja remains surprisingly faithful to Craven's original, beginning with a bickering family that crashes their truck and trailer in the remote desert of New Mexico (actually filmed in Morocco), where they are subsequently terrorized, brutalized, and murdered by a freakish family of psychopaths, mutated by the lingering radiation from 331 nuclear bomb tests that were carried out during the 1950s and '60s. After several killings are carried out in memorably grisly fashion, it's left to the survivors to outsmart their disfigured tormentors, who are blessed with horrendous make-up (especially Robert Joy as freak leader "Lizard") but never quite as unsettling as the original film's horror icon, Michael Berryman. In Aja's hands, this newfangled Hills is all about savagery and de-evolution, reducing its characters to a state of pure, retaliatory terror. It's hardly satisfying in terms of storytelling (since there's hardly any story to tell), but as an exercise in sheer malevolence, it's undeniably effective.--Jeff Shannon
Product Description Based on the original film by fright master Wes Craven, The Hills Have Eyes is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carter family soon realizes the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.
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It all begins with a typically dysfunctional cross-country family road trip. It’s the wedding anniversary of rugged Cleveland police detective “Big Bob” Carter (TED LEVINE) and his chatty wife Ethel (Academy Award-nominee KATHLEEN QUINLAN) and to celebrate, Bob’s asked his extended family to cruise to California with them, hoping the joys of the open road might help fuse their frayed connections. No one is particularly happy about it. Eldest daughter, Lynn, (VINESSA SHAW) worries about her new baby’s safety and comfort while her husband, mild-mannered tech geek, Doug (AARON STANFORD), worries about close encounters with his father-in-law. Meanwhile teen daughter, Brenda, (EMILIE DE RAVIN) detests the idea of leaving her friends for a family bonding trip, while young prankster Bobby, (DAN BYRD) is anxious to entertain the family’s two German Shepherds, Beauty and Beast. Nevertheless, the entire clan piles into a weathered Suburban pulling Bob’s beloved ’88 Airstream trailer and heads west.
Then, Big Bob takes a detour. Suddenly, the Carter family finds themselves in a desolate stretch of desert, with nothing seemingly alive for miles. When they run into a little unexpected vehicle trouble, they realize they are in dire straits, far from help, with a relentlessly sweltering desert sun overhead. But even as they fight to survive the deadly desert, a far greater threat emerges. Now the Carters become aware that they are not quite as alone as they first thought. There is another group of survivors in the hills surrounding the desert: a genetically mutated, insatiably hungry, blood-thirsty clan – the terrifying offspring of miners left behind in the days when atomic tests spread radioactive fallout across the desert – who will stop at nothing to prey on the Carters one by one. Facing the very depths of savagery, the Carter family must pull together if they are to find any hope of returning to civilized life again…alive.
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In the annals of modern fear, few films have had as deep an impact as Wes Craven's 1977 cult classic THE HILLS HAVE EYES. With its gritty, ferocious and relentlessly suspenseful tale of a vacationing family who suddenly face a desperate battle for survival, the low-low-budget but no-holds-barred film was resonant with both intriguing themes and outrageous shocks to the nervous system.
Now, inspired by the wild imagination of suspense-master Craven – who serves as producer along with Marianne Maddalena and Peter Locke – comes a contemporary reinterpretation of THE HILL HAVE EYES from the cutting-edge young filmmakers, Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur, whose recent hit HIGH TENSION won acclaim and controversy for raising the bar on horror films again with its graphic, white-knuckle take on psychological terror.
Aja and Levasseur bring this chilling horror story of ever-intensifying dread hurtling into the 21st century, refashioning it with a raw, gut-wrenching realism and hard-driving visual style to terrify a whole new generation of filmgoers.
It all begins with a typically dysfunctional cross-country family road trip. It's the wedding anniversary of rugged Cleveland police detective "Big Bob" Carter (TED LEVINE) and his chatty wife Ethel (Academy Award® nominee KATHLEEN QUINLAN) and to celebrate, Bob's asked his extended family to cruise to California with them, hoping the joys of the open road might help fuse their frayed connections. No one is particularly happy about it. Eldest daughter, Lynn, (VINESSA SHAW) worries about her new baby's safety and comfort while her husband, mild-mannered tech geek, Doug (AARON STANFORD), worries about close encounters with his father-in-law. Meanwhile teen daughter, Brenda, (EMILIE DE RAVIN) detests the idea of leaving her friends for a family bonding trip, while young prankster Bobby, (DAN BYRD) is anxious to entertain the family's two German Shepherds, Beauty and Beast. Nevertheless, the entire clan piles into a weathered Suburban pulling Bob's beloved '88 Airstream trailer and heads west.
Then, Big Bob takes a detour. Suddenly, the Carter family finds themselves in a desolate stretch of desert, with nothing seemingly alive for miles. When they run into a little unexpected vehicle trouble, they realize they are in dire straits, far from help, with a relentlessly sweltering desert sun overhead. But even as they fight to survive the deadly desert, a far greater threat emerges. Now the Carters become aware that they are not quite as alone as they first thought. There is another group of survivors in the hills surrounding the desert: a genetically mutated, insatiably hungry, blood-thirsty clan – the terrifying offspring of miners left behind in the days when atomic tests spread radioactive fallout across the desert – who will stop at nothing to prey on the Carters one by one. Facing the very depths of savagery, the Carter family must pull together if they are to find any hope of returning to civilized life again…alive.
A new take on Wes Craven's 1977 film of the same name, THE HILLS HAVE EYES is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carters soon realize the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.
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