Customer Reviews

The Hills Have Eyes 2: Unrated [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

A group of National Guard rookies is sent to assist some scientists for an undisclosed project at a remote location in the desert. They soon find themselves stalked by a group of vicious mutants.

Let's make one thing clear, this isn't a good movie, folks. It has none of the gusto, cool cinematography, stylish directing, and well-written screenplay of last year's remake of the original. Where the remake by Alexandre Aja actually surpassed Wes Craven's original, this sequel is totally uninspired. Once again, an interesting premise (albeit overly used in the past; Aliens, Resident Evil, etc) completely wasted on a bad script. The actors weren't very good either, for the most part. Save for three characters, I didn't give a damn about the group of soldiers (they're actually National Guardsmen). The directing was average, no pizzazz, no flashy camera tricks. The movie was predictable and didn't bring anything new to the genre. The suspense element was reduced to nil. The mutants were all huge brutes and pretty much resembled one another as opposed to the different personalities of the ones in the first film.

The only thing this movie had going for it was a handful of clever and inventive kills. The gore was minimal and the violence level was average; nothing we hadn't seen before. Skip it in theatres and wait for the DVD if you're morbidly curious. Go rent (or buy) the first one instead. Horror sequels are almost always bad and the recent ones (Ring 2, Grudge 2, Saw 3, Texas Chainsaw: The Beginning) were all sub par. I'm hoping they won't go for a third Hills movie after this one because it's bound to flat line at the box-office.

If you've seen the original(not the 70's one. different story), you should already know the basic concept. theres a huge plot of desert land that the governemt used as a nuclear weapons testing area. the people living in that area who refused to leave became horribly disfigured from all the radiation. over time the people lost their sanity and became more like animals, killing and eating any normal people that come near their hills.

the disappearances been going on for a while at this point, so theres some scientists investigating the area. when a small national guard squad comes through the area and discovers the corpses, they decide to take action into their own hands. bad idea.

i read some complaints about the whole concept. like, how could some deformed backwoods guys take out a whole squad of armed soldiers? i found the situation relatively believable as things progressed. these hills and mines are their home. these creatures know their environment, and they use it. their stealth and timing pays off, taking out one soldier at a time, never revieling themselves to too large of a group. besides, these soldiers arent even done with training. they were sloppy, and they lacked experience.

a lot of people complain about a lack of suspence, but this movie had more moments that made me jump than the original. there was one really clever kill. i dont want to give anything away, but that guy died very slowly.

the whole breeding concept is really twisted, and the rape scene deffinitely was kind of disturbing, but its not like they gorified the idea. these "people" are monsters. they kill with no remorse. they eat normal humans. this helped communicate their lack of humanity. although it could've been a shorter scene.

overall it felt more like a really twisted, brutal action movie than a horror movie. i really dont understand what everyone's problem is. if you liked the first one, you should like this one.

I didn't expect much from this movie being a sequal/remake but i was surprised. The movie does fly by and has alot of action and plenty of horror. I think it is an improvement on the 2006 remake although not as gruesome.

Written by both Wes Craven and his son Jonathon Craven i think they are trying to say something about the war in Iraq and possibly being unprepared. Jim Hemphill of reeldotcom makes an interesting point "Their script works on multiple allegorical levels, standing in not only for Iraq (with the mutants representing the insurgents), but Afghanistan. The implication is that, like the Taliban, the mutants are creations of our own government that have now turned against us, and part of the movie's impact grows out of the horror of this circumstance--a horror that goes deeper than expected from a conventional escapist thrill ride". He also points out Cravens Politcal Stands in The Last House on The Left with family values and People Under The Stairs and American's class divisions.

The Director Martin Weisz also has harder material to work with than in other horror stories being in broad daylight most of the time and here unlike the 2006 remake our victims are National Guard troops with automatic weapons instead of an innocent family.

I do have to say i was in an Army National Guard combat unit and women are not allowed in combat units, also I haven't seen many women that look like swimsuit models in the military. The seargant and most of these troops act all hardcore however they all leave their weapons laying around anywhere and that would never happen. I only point these things out as being annoying seeing the movie is taking itself seriously.

All and all like i said plenty of action and scares sprinkled with some political statements makes this an above average horror film especially by today's sequal horror remake standards.

Two years after the horrifying incident with the Carter family, a militant group of soliders search out in the New Mexican desert for a lost research facility and scientists that been missing. They soon discover as they pass beyond a hill lies the lair of the flesh-eating crazed mutant hermits that inhabit the area.

Entertaining and violent sequel to the suprisingly good 2006 remake of Wes Craven's 1977 cult classic "The Hills Have Eyes". This movie just happens to be a slight improvement over the disappointing 1985 "Hills Have Eyes 2" but this time without the dumb dog flashback sequence like in that movie, this movie does have some gruesome moments like heads blown off, a brief rape sequence, cannibalism and such. It's more action horror then it's suspenseful precessor from Alexandra Aja, sure the acting would have been better including some dialog but this is an enjoyable sequel.

This DVD contains some fine extras like a Featurette from the FX Channel, When Mutants Attack Featurette, Deleted scenes, a trailer for the first installment, Birth of a Graphic Novel featurette which gives viewers an inside look at the Graphic novel prequel to 1 & 2, gag reel, alternate ending and the making of "Hills Have Eyes 2" featurette.

Sometime, after enough people went missing to (1) fill a desert crater with cars, (2) keep a band of merry mutants alive and in various states of pudgy deformity, and (3) stocked them with the rich pickings of a mine/ faux town that the military loving left in a testing ground, someone in the military thought "something MIGHT be wrong" and opted to look into things. After sniffing around in the mines, wiring them for visuals and sound and some other pretty LED whatnot, someone found themselves in a world of hurt and went missing. Enter the "military" attachment sent into the desert to see what went awry - and enter the realm of "easy pickings," where people with hatchets and knives have a better chance of winning than the pseudo-soldiers hanging around.

After the first round of remakes on the Hills Have Eyes, I was actually impressed with the modernizations and with the gore and thought that the sequel might be a decent dose of - something. I heard the plot points of the movie, the words "military" flashing around and replacing "lost drivers," and I thought this had a chance at some real zest. People trained with guns MUST be able to shoot better than the 4/15 average seen in parts of the 1st one, after all, and seeing a composed force would have to give people a better fighting chance than people kicking it in with their parents on a cross-country trip. That's what I thought, anyhow, and then I watched the movie.
And what I saw was wretched, even as sequels go.

There were so many bad things in this movie that its hard to pick a favorite. The acting was one of those, and I really don't have high expectations of those walking into the lions den. For those who are about to die, we salute you - these modern gladiators did anything but that as they haphazardly portrayed a group I wouldn't want rescuing me from a paperbag attack. By the middle of the movie I had actually forgotten they were supposed to be military; I kept thinking they were a ground of people more akin to being killed on "when Good Hiking Goes Bad" or something like that. The list of bad stuff - it just keeps going on and on. Really, it was that bad and had little in the way of redemption.
Even some terrible deaths couldn't bring thing back from the brink of "blah."

One thing I forgot about the first versus the second - the first had a great blueprint to redo and the second was a trial run of something that quickly lost traction. I knew not to look, too, but knowing and doing are two different beasts.
If anything, please don't repeat my mistakes.

A group of rookie soldiers head out to top secret government area, Sector 16, to bring supplies to a bunch of scientists who are out in the rocky desert conducting tests. When the soldiers arrive at the camp, the scientists are missing. Soon, they discover that the surrounding hills are infested with mutant cannibal killers bent on slaughtering anyone that comes their way.

Simple story, but enough of a premise for me to enjoy this The Hills Have Eyes sequel. Sure, it wasn't as good as the first one, but we all knew the sequel was coming given this flick's predecessor's ending.

While the mutants in the first one were just plain disturbing to look at, in this one they were downright ugly. Warts, misshaped body parts, skewed eyes, drool, bad teeth--they really upped the gross factor with the makeup and prosthetics this time.

The army-based cast of characters are stereotypical, sure, but in these types of movies--I'd almost say a "post-apocalyptic" one albeit a localized apocalypse--army characters fill a need that regular Joe Blows don't. After all, it's always the army that's supposed to come to the frontlines in extreme circumstances. However--and granted I'm not a military man myself--I did find the army folks lacking in the areas of intelligence and overall combat skill. Yes, they weren't seasoned vets, but at the same time, you'd think they'd be better trained to handle formidable foes hand-to-hand if needed be.

The dark tunnels and caverns in this flick added a level of spookiness that regular rooms or basements can't. No one likes being trapped in the dark even if it's the dark of your own living room. Get trapped in a foreign location not made of wood and drywall and you got a rough terrain for anyone to endure.

Will they make a third one? I don't know as it's been awhile since this installment, however this fan of the franchise wouldn't mind another sequel, though I'd be more thrilled if it was in the vein of the first rather than the second.

All in all, still an enjoyable late night flick, especially if you're into mutant terror.

A.P. Fuchs
Canister X

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Martin Weisz, 2007)

Weisz (60 Seconds) seems to have encountered rather virulent hatred from a good portion of the population for The Hills Have Eyes 2. Which should probably tip you off that this movie is better than the awful, awful remake it follows. After all, the American public at large has an incredibly well-documented lack of taste, especially when it comes to horror films. (Just look at at the foreign horror flicks that get a theatrical release in America as opposed to those that don't; Darkness vs. [REC]; Haute Tension vs. Saint Ange; etc.) Yes, it's still deeply rooted in horror-movie cliché and character stupidity, and the score is one of the, shall we say, least inspiring I've heard recently, but compared to the mindless rah-rah-patriot crap in the 2006 movie that made such a mockery of the original, Wes Craven-directed 1975 film, this is Oscar material.

Plot: two years after the events in the first film, an incompetent National Guard squad and their long-suffering sergeant (Snakes on a Plane's Flex Alexander) are sent to a very familiar stretch of land to deliver supplies to a scientific expedition (whom we saw getting slaughtered in the first couple of scenes). When they get there, the camp is deserted, but a weak distress call sends them off into the hills, and into a confrontation with the locals, a band of mutants who are the offspring of people trapped in the mines during the nuclear testing that went on there in the fifties.

It's straight survival horror, with any message to be found in it so badly handled that it can be safely ignored. In that regard alone it towers over the 2006 remake. The characters, while most are not fully fleshed, are at least not paper-thin attempts at archetype. The situations they're put in are things that logically follow from what came before, rather than from shameless attempts at manipulating the audience. (Well, most of the time, anyway. There's that "except the women. They'll keep 'em for breedin'." part.) Yes, better than the 2006 movie. But still, couldn't you have done something even remotely original with the material? Ooh, army men in a haunted mine. Scary. (Note: yes, I do understand the difference between the army and the national guard, thanks. "Army men" is a generic reference to the toy soldiers we all played with as kids, and the sentence is meant to be read in an eight-year-old's voice.) That said, it's at least watchable, and mildly entertaining. And, most importantly, it's not an attempt, as I had feared it would be, to remake Craven's 1985 sequel. That alone earns it quite a few brownie points. But not enough to score it a recommendation. Watch it if you have nothing better to do, or if, for some reason I will never be able to fathom, you actually liked the first remake. **

Going into The Hills Have Eyes 2 I heard all the terrible reviews, but I figured I would still give it a chance. I liked the original 77 version as well as 2006 remake. To be honest I even enjoyed Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes Part II for the simple fact it was so bad it was sort of enjoyable. Well the same cannot be said about The Hills Have Eyes 2 07.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 is pretty much a complete waste; the script by Wes & Jonathan Craven is very weak filled with boring and clichéd characters. There were some decent ideas, but they just didn't seem to work. I understand film is a business and it's often about making money then artistic value. It seems very rare these days it's the other way around. It's quite obvious the script was rushed; it feels more like an early draft rather than the final shooting script.

The characters lack any depth at all and odds are by the time the movie is over you won't even remember any of their names except for Napoleon played by Michael McMillian. The only reason you'll remember his name is because that name is kind of hard to forget.

Director Martin Weisz fails at brining any tension or suspense; in fairness there is only so much you can put on him. He didn't exactly have a very good script to work with. But the scenes when the characters are on the hunt for the mutants totally falls flat with zero tension and it just drags on and on. With some editing while it would still lack tension at least it wouldn't drag.

The kill scenes are boring as well; nothing about them stands out. Bottom line is we have seen this all before. The scenes in the cave could have worked. But like every other scene they fall flat The Hills Have Eyes 2 starts off well enough, but once we start getting to the middle everything just falls a part. The loss of Gregory Levasseur & Alexandre Aja really shows in this movie.

The idea of killer mutants isn't a bad idea, but I just can't take it too serious. But both Craven and Aja in their respected films were able to bring a sense of dread and doom and made the mutants a little bit creepy. The mutants in The Hills Have Eyes 2 aren't scary in the least and they sure as hell aren't intimidating. They are just as boring as the National Guard characters.

Gregory Levasseur and Alexandre Aja were able to make the characters in the remake interesting and sympathetic. They were likeable and you'll be able to root for them. Again the characters here are clichéd lack any depth and I highly doubt anyone will care when they got knocked off.

As I stated before I understand filmmaking is a business, but couldn't there have been a little more time to work on the movie? This is one of those movies that after it ends and you are asked about it you can't really answer any questions. Nothing stands out and it's one of those flicks you watch and forget each scene after they happen.

I have a lot of respect for Wes Craven as a filmmaker. Regardless if you think he's great, average or terrible the guy has done a lot for the horror genre. But The Hills Have Eyes 2 was nothing more than a cash in. While I understand that is the point to most sequels, but there really didn't seem to be much of an effort put in. Like I said the idea wasn't bad, but it was rushed and just didn't seem to have any care put into it.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 runs at about 90-min and to be quite honest it feels a hell of a lot longer. I know that is a clichéd thing to say, but it's true. The pacing is just so slow and boring and things just seem to go on forever. Going into The Hills Have Eyes 2 I wasn't expecting a horror classic all I expected was a fairly decent movie. But all I got was a very poor and boring movie.

Hopefully after this those hills cave in.

After a group of soldiers and some researchers are brutally murdered at the same inbred New Mexico desert playground as the first movie, a group of National Guard weekend warriors arrive for some desert training and a re-supply stop. Annnnnd, the stage is set. This makes me happy. When the fat private with a lisp - nicknamed "Spitter" - realizes they have poor radio reception and says, "It'th the hillth, Tharge," I know I'm going to enjoy the movie.

Before this goes further, know the following: This is not a movie for fans of good cinema, with great acting, intelligent directing, or incredibly complex scripts. This movie immediately enters the make-fun-of-the-bad-horror-movie territory, and stays until gory end. The fact that most of the villains look like Sloth from the Goonies is only icing on the cake.

Anyway, the soldiers are woefully unprepared and sufficiently ignorant to make it a fun ride. To chronicle this group of sad sack's screw ups would be hopeless. Needless to say, it's SNAFU and they're about to get FUBAR. One private attempts CPR on fellow breathing soldier. Looks like the medic needs training. All the soldiers have live ammo for this training mission. The armorer definitely needs training. One female was issued the Hooters version of the BDU undershirt. Clearly the Central Issue Facility made a mistake. Add that to the long hair, the women with gobs of makeup, and buck privates leaving their weapons lying around, and the whole squad needs refresher training. It's safe to say the military aspects of this film are completely ridiculous and unrealistic.

The kills and gore are particularly brutal, with blood galore the special effects aren't frugal. To the aid station help arrives; quick decapitations, say your goodbyes. M16 bullets fly, a Mexican guy fries, and the inbred die. Disembowelments, buckets of blood; a suicide and a retarded stud. Rusty blades into appendages and eyes, and a despicably horrible bedroom surprise.

Great sequel made for the lover of pure shock horror, I can't wait for the inevitable sequel.

As a horror movie enthusiast, I can appreciate the value and entertainment of campy horror and even get a few giggles out of a really awful horror film. However, after viewing this one, I wish to say to any Hills Have Eyes fans and like-minded horror fans out there that this movie is a complete waste of your time.

The essential plot is a poorly hacked-together story of a bunch of rookie army kids are sent out in the desert and attacked by a band of mutants, supposedly the survivors of the mutant clan from the first movie. Through a series of silly mix-ups and extremely poor decision making on the part of our "heros" (shooting wildly and wasting ammo, splitting up in hostile territory, and other such blunders that no decently trained soldier would do), they manage to get picked off easily by the supernatural-seeming mutants.

I really liked the first movie because although it did stretch the boundaries of what's plausible, there was a decent film there. The mutations the mutants sported were "based" off of actual medical science, for example, and in this movie we have a mutant with camouflage skin and a long tongue. And another with an extraordinary sense of smell, like a dog. It really just gets ridiculous.

Of course, the first movie was also actually /frightening/ and had a point. This one is essentially just a showcase for the rape scene that horrified people in the first one, made even more blatant in this time around. That scene may have been disturbing in #1, but it was not the point of the movie as it is in the sequel.

This movie is essentially a complete waste of your time. You can spend a more fulfilling two hours staring at a wall for what I'm concerned. At least this activity won't annoy, insult and bore you nearly as much.