The Hills Have Eyes II Review
Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz on 03.26.2007
A failure of sad proportions.
Michael McMillian- PFC "Napoleon" Napoli
Jessica Stroup- PFC Amber Johnson
Daniella Alonso- PFC "Missy"
Jacob Vargas- PFC "Crank"
Lee Thompson Young- PFC Delmar
Ben Crowley- PFC "Stump"
Eric Edelstein- Cpl. "Splitter"
Flex Alexander- Sgt. Jeffrey "Sarge" Millstone
Jeff Kober- Redding
Directed by Martin Weisz
Screenplay by Jonathan Craven and Wes Craven
Distributed by Fox Atomic
Rated R for prolonged sequences of strong gruesome horror violence and gore, a rape and language
Runtime- 90 minutes
Website: http://www.foxatomic.com
Oh, boy, where to begin?
In 2006, the "The Hills Have Eyes" remake, produced by the 1977 original's helmer Wes Craven and directed by Alaexandre Aja, hit theatres and basically pleasantly surprised (as much as a horror movie can do that) horror movie audiences with its stark desert scenery and brutal big butt violence. I had certain issues with it, as parts of tried to aspire to Zack Snyder's pretty good but now officially completely overrated "Dawn of the Dead" remake (and that last shot of the mutant's eyes in the binoculars was pretty lame, too) but, overall, I thought the flick was pretty good. It was a vast improvement over Aja's previous "Haute Tension," which is a decent movie wrapped up in an abomination, so there was that, too. Fox, the company responsible for releasing the movie, ended up making decent money with the remake, and decided that what the movie world needed was an immediate sequel, about a year after the first flick's release. Now, I don't really have a problem with horror movie sequels, or even horror movie sequels that come out a year later. There's certainly nothing wrong with "plowing that field" again and plowing it quickly if people want to see more of the desert mutant monsters again. Desert mutant monsters are always fun (especially if they eat people, too. Did they do that in the first movie? I can't remember).
And so here it is, the spring of 2007, and the sequel is out, "The Hills Have Eyes II." It tells the story of a group of somewhat green National Guard recruits out in the desert, training for eventual deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq, who end up going to Sector 16, home of the desert mutant monster cannibals, to drop off supplies to a group of scientists who are setting up an array of surveilance equipment to monitor the area. As soon as the National Guardspeople arrive, bad stuff starts to happen, and it's not too long after that that the recruits are battling the vicious mutants, trying to survive. Directed by Martin Weisz and scripted by Jonathan Craven and Wes Craven, it has all of the important parts of the first flick (the scorching hot and bleak looking desert, the caves and the sand and all the rest, nasty butt mutant monsters) and adds the potential of even greater and more brutal violence with the notion of gun toting army people roaming the desert, training for a nasty fight in the future, duking it out with the mutants. The flick should be a fun smash, a bevy of cinematic badbuttness, something that will get under your horror movie nerd skin and make you say "Wow, that's cool."
But it doesn't do any of those things. Instead, what we end up with is a bland, somewhat boring movie that has no idea what it's doing. It's a movie that just sits there, taking up space, wallowing in its own potential, completely unsure about what it should do. The flick just doesn't work.
It starts out with a pretty nifty mutant baby birth scene that's absolutely disgusting. We've got blood, goo, fluid, screaming, grunting from both the tied down and scared to death mother and the nasty mutant hovering over her. Once the "baby" spews out of her, the mutant eliminates the mother with a brutal beating. We then get an on screen thing about the family attack from the first movie, what Sector 16 is, setting up some of the movie. We then see the scientific team setting up a bunch of equipment that, I guess, is going to have a dual purpose. It's there for the war game training bulldinky that the army uses the area for, and it's for monitoring the strange stuff going on in the hills (the mutants). Some stuff happens, generators die, circuits fry, and mutants attack. For some reason we don't get to see much in the way of an actual attack. We get to see the aftermath. The always great Jeff Kober shows up as an army security officer for the scientific team. That's pretty much all he does, as he's quickly stabbed through the shoulder and thrown into a hole, sans weapon but with radio.
The movie then shifts to a live fire training exercise on the streets of "Kandahar," where we meet the National Guardspeople who will eventually fight it out with the mutants. There's PFC Amber Johnson (Jessica Stroup), PFC "Missy" (Daniella Alonso), PFC "Crank" (Jacob Vargas), PFC Delmar (Lee Thompson Young), PFC "Stump" (Ben Crowley), Cpl. "Splitter" (Eric Edelstein), PFC Mickey (Reshad Strik), and PFC "Napoleon" Napoli (Michael McMillian). Stuff blows up, bullets fly, and the team, according to their Sgt. (Flex Alexander), does everything wrong. PFC Napoleon, outed as a bit of an evil liberal who hates America and the war effort, is given the biggest verbal lashing. He's a liberal, you know. He's a punk. The team is going to have to learn to work together because if they don't they will not survive in an actual war zone. And they can't do stupid stuff like running back to get your helmet. That's just wrong. When they go to the scientific research compound, they're going to stay in the area and do more training. It's their punishment.
So the team goes to the compound and finds that its deserted. The equipment and all that is still there, but the scientists are gone. The Sarge tells the team to split up and find out where the scientists went. Suddenly, they get a desperate radio message from Kober's Redding. And then one of them sees a mirror reflecting on top of a hill. The Sarge figures that must be where the radio distress message is coming from. He gathers the team up (except Napoleon, who has to stay behind and guard the portajohn while standing on one leg, and Amber, who will stay behind and monitor the radio) and off they go into the hills to "save" whomever is sending the radio message. While the team is off in the hills, Napoleon decides to disobey his orders and go to the bathroom. While in the portajohn, Napoleon is attacked by a hand that comes out of the toilet. The hand belongs to one of the scientific team, who upon closer examination was cut up by someone. Cut up like a piece of meat. Napoleon freaks out, Amber freaks out, they realize that their rifles are missing, and no one knows what's going on. Up on the hill, Micky falls into a hole and hurts his ankle, the Sarge is blown away by his own troops, and Kober appears all bloody and beat up only to shoot himself in the head. And then the mutants attack. The team members that survive this first attack then end up retreating into the caves that the mutants live in, hoping to find a way to survive. And this is also where the flick retreats. It basically goes into these caves to die.
Michael McMillian, the hero, isn't a very good hero. He's obviously not a very good soldier, but then you have to ask yourself why he's even in the National Guard to begin with. If that was ever explained I missed it. And when he goes down in the caves and starts holding his combat knife like Steven Seagal in "Under Siege" it makes you wonder if anyone knew exactly what his character was supposed to be. Jessica Stroup does an okay job as the blonde soldier. She does her best with what she's given, which isn't much anyway, but she doesn't come off looking like an idiot. The rest of the Guardspeople are basically fodder. PFC "Missy", played by Daniella Alonso, gets raped by one of the mutants, so at least she has that sequence going for her. Flex Alexander, as the Sarge, gets all of the best lines (watch that cliche drill instructor scene after the Kandahar war game. Great stuff) but ends up getting the least respect second only to Jeff Kober. The mutants, while they look pretty cool, aren't half as interesting as they look. There's one that drools an awful lot, there's one that's kind of nice to the Guardsmen (I guess he's supposed to be slightly less retarded than the others), and there's one that can blend into his surroundings. Beyond that I can't remember much about the others.
I can understand the logic behind having the Guardspeople as young and somewhat innocent people, as they are training to fight in the meat grinder that is the war on terrorism. It fits into the political message of the movie. But wouldn't the movie have been more potent, the action and violence more potentially exciting and brutal, the political message more meaningful if the soldiers at the center of the movie were grizzled veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan going through a sort of refresher course in desert fighting techniques, only to then get sucked into a brutal war zone here in "American" desert? I'm thinking of Jeff Kober here, who would have made a fine lead soldier stuck in the crap. I can see him in the caves, having an Iraq flashback while gutting one of the mutants or something. I mean, part of the political message here is "war is hell." Why not show that? Asking all of that makes me then wonder why Martin Weisz, the director, seems to think this movie should be some kind of suspense filled jump scare a thon. There's one point towards the end where the jump scares happen about five times in a row, in a matter of about four minutes, and by the third scare you're bored out of your mind. I know I was. And can someone explain to me why this movie isn't a gorefest? Why does the movie start out with such nasty promise, only to wimp out about a third of the way through? Am I missing something here?
What do we have? A mutant baby birth scene, Jeff Kober stabbed in the shoulder, a war game experience, a man cut in half with intestines showing, a pick axe to the head, liberal bashing, broken ankle, a man bent in half and sucked into a small hole, multiple gun shot wounds, mutant rape, a tube slide, rock climbing, a man's arm gets cut off, mutant tongue kissing, butt rape, head smashed with a rock, a body part room, a fun dynamite explosion, dripping mutant brains, finger inside the head to touch the dripping the mutant brains, a metal pole through the back out through the chest, mutant testicle smashing, an M-16 through the mouth, a lame heat signature computer program, and a disclaimer at the end of the credits where the producers proclaim how much they love the troops. Oh, and is that 80's sounding heavy metal song at the end, "The Hills Have Eyes," is that meant to be an inside joke or something? Was that the song used for the sequel to the original?
Some great lines include: "Shove the afterlife up your ass!," "There's a hand in the shitter!," "Who is that guy? Shitman the barbarian, I don't know!," "You are officially a bad motherfucker!," and "Dead is never better."
"The Hills Have Eyes II" should have been a "killer" experience. What we end up with is a mess. Although I will say that if this flick does do well at the box office that Craven and Fox Atomic do another one. I wouldn't mind seeing another attempt at this premise, mutants in the desert. I just don't want to see this type of movie again. I don't want to see another boring mutants in the desert movie. I want it to matter, to be cool, to be rememberd. Looking cool just isn't enough here.
Wait until it comes out on DVD. Otherwise, go only if you want to. If you really need to.
The 411: "The Hills Have Eyes II" is a movie that should have been better than it is. It shouldn't be the mess that it is. But it's what we've been given, so we're all just going to have to deal with it. It should have been Jeff Kober's movie to own. For the love of Drake what happened here? It's... it's... depressing. So depressing.
