Dir.
Martin Weisz, US 2007, 90 mins.
Cast: Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso.
Review by Dave Hall
Thirty years after Wes Craven first unleashed
his stone age, cannibalistic mutants onto the civilised world,
Craven and producer Peter Locke are still mining a rich seam
of mayhem in the blankly disinterested New Mexican desert.
Last year's slightly too reverential remake of the original
The Hills Have Eyes is followed now by this gleefully gruesome
part 2 that, mutants aside, has very little in common either
with the remake, or with Craven's own cash-in sequel to his
original Hills, the feeble 1985 effort The Hills Have Eyes
Part 2 (notable only as the film in which a traumatised dog
has a flashback).
This sequel is more dog-tags than dogs. In a no nonsense
prologue, secretive army scientists, using the latest surveillance
techniques to try and track the desert-dwelling mutants,
are all bloodily ambushed. They are succeeded by a group
of tough-talking, but initially inept National Guard recruits;
can this mixed bag of greenhorn grunts shape up, or are they
too about to be inventively skewered by the crafty cannibals?
The anthropological trimmings of Craven's original The Hills
Have Eyes might encourage the viewer to look for deeper meanings
here, and indeed a war on terror subtext is made explicit
early on as the soldiers, ill-equipped and out of their depth,
find themselves up against ruthless guerilla opponents. There's
even a suicide bomber and a friendly-fire incident, though
a court martial is the least of the culpable soldier's worries.
But, to put it mildly, nuance is not this film's strong suit,
and once the unit venture into the disused mines that the
mutants call home, they are involved in a very different
war on terror (there's more than a touch of Aliens as the
soldiers tackle their foe at close quarters).
The Hills 2 writing team of Craven senior and his son Jonathan
clearly have a novel take on father-son bonding rituals.
Not for them a spot of fishing or trip to the ball game;
instead they have devised a succession of rape, mutilation
and murder scenes that start with the disorientating and
blood-curdling opening title sequence, and up the ante without
mercy thereafter. The excess may have you giggling or gagging
depending on your idea of fun, but director Weisz piles on
the relentless, bone-crunching agony with a straight face,
the all too obvious sadism swamping any nightmarish undertone
that might have made the complete lack of logic or restraint
disturbing.
In short, Weisz has made a freak show of a film, though
one that is well-paced and edited, and which makes particularly
effective use of its claustrophobic underground world (cinematographer
is Sam McCurdy who also shot The Descent). Plus there are
flashes of Craven's trademark gallows humour (you may never
look at a Portaloo in the same way again). But the mutants
are now so grotesque that they might as well be from a different
planet, though frustratingly the sci-fi avenue is only glimpsed
down, never really explored. In the end, the mutants are
plain old bogeymen, and whilst there's more than enough blood
and guts on show here for even the most ravenous gorehound,
ultimately the film is not the visceral experience it wants
to be.
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