The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Directed by: Alexandre Aja | 90 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Ted Levine, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie De Ravin, Dan Byrd, Tom Bower, Laura Ortiz, Billy Drago, Robert Joy, Ezra Buzzington, Maxime Giffard, Michael Bailey Smith, Maisie Camilleri Preziosi, Ivana Turchetto, Desmond Askew, Judith Jane Vallette, Adam Perrel

Associations with ‘Dr. Strangelove’ can hardly help but have a negative effect on the film in question, and the way the nuclear explosions in the opening cut of ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ are interspersed with photos of deformed children is also not very subtle, but director Aja has tried to to add a politically conscious charge to his remake of Wes Craven’s rather one-sided and now very clichéd horror story from the seventies. The only question is whether there is a clear philosophy underlying his expressions, and whether this comes across in the right way. At the end of the film, the predominant feeling is that you have been watching a nicely executed (sub)genre film.

If you can’t get enough of this type of horror film – you know the thing: a bunch of naives get stranded in “Redneck” territory and have to survive there by beating or shooting some local psychopaths – ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ plenty of fun. This word may not have been chosen correctly. Unless you take pleasure in people being set on fire on a tree, or defenseless women being (almost) raped by mutated insane. These two moments both take place in the same sequence, halfway through the film, and are among the most disturbing of the entire film. The elaboration is so effective because of the nature of the actions on the one hand, but also because of the viewer’s bond with the characters in need. As a viewer you do feel a shock when these characters are attacked or even murdered. Fortunately, Aja took the time to make the main characters and their mutual relationships tangible for the viewer. It’s not so much that the characters have been given a lot of depth, but we now get the feeling that we are traveling with them in the camper, instead of just observing. The funny allusions and the mutual frictions between brother and sister, husband and wife, and father-in-law and son-in-law are recognizable and amusing, and provide a little more humanity. It also helps that the acting is above average for these kinds of films. Emilie de Ravin, known from the series ‘Lost’, believably plays the recalcitrant adolescent Brenda, who gives up on the civil marriage of her older sister Lynn (Vinessa Shaw), and is embarrassed for her parents and the excessive display of affection (“Happy nobody is looking”…). Vinessa Shaw evokes a lot of sympathy as Lynn, the wife of goofy Doug (Aaron Stanford) who tries to keep everyone happy. Aaron Stanford also knows how to play his crucial role, in which he has to change from pacifist and gun-hater to chopping and shooting avenger, although the change comes fairly quickly.

It is a pity that these decent actors have ended up in a chewed-up horror story that has little surprising to offer. Our friends ask for directions from a mischievous servant at an ominous gas station and, in a fit of bewilderment, are led to an obscure little road, where their motorhome happens to break down. The two men decide to each choose a different path. Dad goes back alone to the dodgy gas station, which, who would have thought, will turn out to be a bad choice. Doug walks in a random direction and comes across a plain full of stranded cars, some with trailers or boats still attached, or all kinds of stuff in the back seat. There’s no alarm bell ringing with Doug. He just takes a stuffed animal from one of the cars and goes back to “home”. Meanwhile, one of the dogs (named Beauty and Beast) smells trouble at the camper and runs into the hills. Doug then runs after it on his own.

This is asking for trouble, and waiting for the viewer for the inevitable confrontation of the loving family with the monsters from the hills. What is interesting again is the moment that Doug visits the village of these mutants, which has been beautifully realized, as a kind of wax museum: a place of memories, where time has stood still. We see mannequins in the garden, on a swing, squeaking plates. But the residents themselves are truly grotesque, culminating in a reclining man with a gigantic, chubby chin, singing the American national anthem that comes on television. We also see deformed children sitting on the floor who ask Doug to play with them. In case it wasn’t already clear, the mutants put their grudge against the US government for having them burst during the nuclear tests. Aja really seems to want to point out these abuses of America. Only, generating sympathy for these people becomes very difficult, if you see what has preceded the film. The possible understanding for these people is brutally stopped when Doug picks up an American flag and rams it down the throat of one of the monsters. This, coupled with the heroic way in which he slashes at his victims with his ax, clearly aiming for a cheering spectator reaction, means that the political, or ambiguous, dimension does not last very long. The spectator must above all be shocked, and later be able to taste the catharsis of a retaliation. In short, the film tries to be more than a standard horror film, but does not succeed very well in this. In the end it remains just a grim, reasonably successful horror film in “Redneck” territory. Not more, but certainly not less.