"The Hills Have Eyes Review"

Just saw this movie last night... I'll get to the point. It sucked.

I know, I know, most horror movies suck, but for some reason Claire and I were under the impression that this was supposed to be a good movie. I thought I remembered hearing some positive buzz about the movie, and I vaguely remember the ads being somewhat interesting. But to be honest, I didn't really look into it very much. I saw this as a postive thing as the last horror movie I went to see where I didn't know much about it was the American version of The Ring, and that movie was quite good.

Anyway, spoilers abound...

First of all, we thought this was going to be something about some hills out in a dark forrest area with a dilapidated house sitting on top of some hill that was really an ancient demonic ritual site or something like that. Instead its about a family of vacationers that get stuck out in the desert of New Mexico and fall victim to a bunch of nuclear fallout mutants that all look like Sloth from The Goonies. Even worse, the majority of the movie is set during the day. Not scary.

If you remember the tagline for this movie "The lucky ones die first." You'll know another reason why I was so disappointed. That line implies that 1) the ones that die at the end, die the worst deaths and 2) that a lot of people will be dying. Neither are true. Three 'good guys' die. Three. Well, four if you count the guy that killed himself, but I don't think that should count because I think he was more of a 'bad guy' anyway. And as for dying first? The guy that dies first gets his head bashed in and is burned alive. Pretty horrible death, isn't it? How do the 2nd and 3rd people die? Shot. Yep. Shot in the belly and shot in the head. I don't know about you, but having my skull bashed in and being burned alive sounds much worse than being shot to death.

Another gripe... the movie takes forever to get to the good stuff. You know how only three people die? Well, it takes almost half of the movie for that to happen. And then they all die within 15 minutes. Boring.

Finally, I suppose there was some message that we're supposed to have taken to heart. Something about the government displacing families from their homes or some other non-issue these days. Who cares? I want to be entertained, not preached to. Fuck off.

This movie was a huge disappointment. I give it a 5.5 out of 10, but at least it wasn't The Transporter.