The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)

The Exorcist, The Last House on the left, the original The Hills Have Eyes, and Night of the Living Dead are just a few titles that I consider to be true horror movies. Until watching the remake of the Hills have eyes I thought for the most part the art of making horror movies was either lost or dead. In all honesty how many times do we really feel bad for the characters being traumatized in recent horror movies. However before I go off on a rant let me get to the point. The remake of The Hills Have Eyes was a reminder of what horror movies should be. It was well acted with characters that you are not just waiting to watch get slaughtered. I was able to identify with the family and from the buzz on the Internet I'm not the only one who could identify with them. It made the remake of The Hills Have Eyes stand out. From the moment the movie ended it was obvious there would be a sequel and I could not wait. Finally a real horror movie not some watered-down slice and dice gore fest. I mean the remake was so good there would be no need to change the formula for the sequel right? Wrong!

Apparently the makers of the sequel thought they could improve on the last film unfortunately for us who saw the Hills have eyes 2 they were wrong. It seems like they removed almost every good quality from the prior film. Instead of a family we could identify with we get a group of National Guard trainees who for the life of me seemed mentally challenged to put it nicely. Next instead of slightly over-the-top cannibalistic inbred radioactive minors they decide what's needed is way over the top cannibalistic radioactive rapists who have evolved into almost a separate type of species or so they look anyways.

Then to top it all off there's no real direction of the film. First of all the trainees try to make it to what they believe a distress signal. On the way up the side of the mountain they discover they are not alone and decide to go back down. Where they meet up with a couple of trainees who were left at the bottom. These trainees inform the rescue party that something attacked them and set the vehicles on fire. Still they decide to continue to make their way back down but their path is cut off by one of the mutants. So now they must travel through caves that they discovered where the mutants live to make it off the mountain. It just all seemed pointless to me though, where are they going to go once they get off the mountain there transportation was destroyed. There deserted without any food or water which brings up another interesting but annoying fact about the mutants in the remake its obvious how they survived they got supplies from the gas station attendant there was nowhere for them to get supplies in the Hills have eyes 2. I just feel like the Hills have eyes 2 should have started were the first one left off.

As far as the acting goes nobody did a really bad job but there's no character that you can empathize with mutant or National Guard trainee. That being said the special effects were great but a horror movie is more than just special effects. Even though it really does sound like I hated this movie I didn't. It's just your run-of-the-mill average cookie-cutter horror movie and I expected so much more. It lacked the heart that its predecessor had. For that reason I give it 3/5 stars.