Considering how much global warming has been in the news recently with various studies suggesting the current and future changes it's making to our world, I wouldn't be surprised if there are plenty of offerings in the pipeline to follow "The Day After Tomorrow" as films exploiting the situation. Like the killer bees from the 1970s, bird flu should also have a Hollywood agent since the industry seems to enjoy natural or manmade, doomsday type scenarios (that have included the above, as well as sharks, the Ebola virus and more).
But the great-granddaddy of such films is nuclear energy. I'm not talking about "The China Syndrome" (although those sorts of movies occupy another sub-genre niche), but rather all of the pictures featuring any number and type of "monsters" spawned by atomic testing and use. Of course, such films had their heyday in the 1950s when such testing was most prevalent, but considering the recent reported attempts of not-so-friendly states to build nuclear arsenals, perhaps we're in store for a second round of such films.
If so, "The Hills Have Eyes" could be one of the first such entries. Then again, the original film has been around for nearly thirty years since director Wes Craven concocted the low-budget, cult favorite. In it, an average American family goes camping, only to run into a bunch of cannibalistic "monsters," the results of too much inbreeding. Craven now returns as the producer of this remake that re-imagines the tale that's gone retro in terms of using former nuclear testing as the culprit behind the hideously deformed mutants.
While the film -- like its predecessor -- is essentially just a typical cat and mouse type horror offering, the nuclear angle does present two intriguing aspects, even if neither is fully realized. One is from a directorial and production design standpoint where much of the last act of the film takes place in one of those faux towns built by the U.S. Government in the 1950s to simulate what would happen to them and their mannequin inhabitants if exposed to a nuclear blast.
The opening credits -- done in that ironic style of juxtaposing real military test footage with a lively and upbeat song -- show the arrangement of such towns and nuclear blasts (as well as footage of deformed babies and adults) in what's one of the film's more powerful moments. Then, following a rather boring midsection, the story -- penned by writer/director Alexandre Aja and co-writer Grégory Levasseur -- eventually returns to one of those towns, teaming with fifty plus years of dust, radiation and neglect.
The results are creepy in that the original mannequins are still in place (including two childlike ones still perched on a swing set), thus providing lots of opportunity for Aja to goose the viewer when our hero encounters them while on a rescue mission. Considering all of the repeated uses of trite "jump scenes" (birds suddenly taking flight, people or animals suddenly at windows, figures darting by in the foreground of shots, etc.), it's surprising and disappointing that the filmmakers don't get better mileage out of this late in the game scenario, but at least it has an inherent creepiness of its own.
The second but similarly underused element is that the monsters are actually victims themselves, or the similarly deformed offspring thereof. But unlike the Frankenstein monster, there's no sympathy for these beings. Beyond a sickly wheelchair bound man with an enormously elongated head (that actually evoked such sounds of shock from such viewers at our screening until he turns out to be a bad guy as well) and a friendly mutant girl, all of these characters are sadistic, cannibalistic killers and/or sex offenders.
Not surprisingly, the film's design uses them in a standard, formulaic style. The main characters are introduced (this being a vacationing family and their son-in-law), become trapped in a desolate desert following a non-accidental truck crash, and then subsequently attacked by the monsters. We then know that the victims will be picked off one by one, and that considering the new cinematic trend for graphic gruesomeness, will be dispatched in various grisly ways.
As is usually the case in such films, a hardy soul finds their inner resolve (not to mention their Chuck Bronson persona) and turns the tables on their attackers. Here, that duty is split between the teenage son - played by Dan Byrd -- and his brother-in-law embodied by Aaron Stanford. The former angle isn't terribly interesting, but the latter does generate something of a cathartic magnetism that gives the film a much needed boost in its second half.
The fact that the character is also trying to save his infant daughter doesn't hurt matters, giving him something of a Ripley complex (Sigourney Weaver's character in "Aliens" trying to protect the girl Newt) that endears him to the viewer despite him originally being portrayed as somewhat of a pacifist jerk. Not to be outdone, the family dog -- a German Shepherd -- also gets into the act, delivering the first of similarly cathartic counterattacks that elicited the first mass cheer from our screening audience.
And when boiled down to its basics, that's all these sorts of films are about -- scaring or at least tensing up the viewer to the point of uncomfortableness before unleashing the hero or heroes to restore justice and deliver the appropriate comeuppance. In that sense, this film delivers, seemingly in a better fashion than some of its more recent predecessors. But does that make it a good film? Not really. That said, if these sorts of grisly offerings are your cup of bloody tea, you'll probably "enjoy" what's offered.
For me, if I'm in the mood for nuclear-inspired thrills and chills in some southwestern U.S. desert, I'll stick with the campy but highly entertaining "Tremors" (and its simple but very effective story, and clever twist on being trapped in such environs). While I was partially pulled into the proceedings here once was the Bronson-inspired angle kicked in, there's not enough here to make this memorable, let alone a classic of the genre. "The Hills Have Eyes" rates as a 4.5 out of 10.
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