The Hills Have Eyes (2006 film) - Movie Review

On a road trip to California, in the midst of a moisty desert, a family of 7, stops their RV at a low-key gas station,

and to take directions from an old, peculiar drunk-ass with an old, rusty shotgun.
The Kids are just being kids. Busting each other’s balls, complaining about AC, scorching heat and contemplating about basking in the sun,
spending money in Vegas, enjoying…
Little did they know that the trip they took would change their lives forever.
As the movie starts, and the opening credits unravel, we see one of the ‘by the book’ cliche beginnings. For a movie of this calibre, of course.
‘’Government released some chemicals. Area contaminated… Ominous occurings…’’

As the Godfather of movie reviews (Roger Ebert) said, and I quote: ‘’It always begins with the Wrong Gas Station.’’
That’s why, perhaps, I was biased about the movie. The desire to not want to see another ‘’Texas Chainsaw’’ ripoff,
had been overcome with the fact that there have never been such specific characters (we rarely ever have a son-in-law, 2 daughters — it is mostly, a family of 4, or a group of rowdy friends) in a movie ever before.
Moreover, I wanted to see where the story would lead me. Is it going to have some sort of character development or is it going to
end in a bloodbath and explicit, rated R scenes that are excessive and make you turn your head away from the screen, and as
soon as you glance back at the scene, the deformed creature still bludgeons and slays the victim, as the excessive fake blood oozes
down their throats, scalps’ eyes etc… No, that did NOT HAPPEN in this movie.

— — The ‘’scavengers’’ are the descendants of people whose DNA got contaminated by the government, because they refused to leave their land, and the government had to go ‘guns blazing’, and released chemicals which, as you may know, always end up having everlasting,
scars — being disfigured for life.
You can clearly see a lot of rated R scenes, and a lot of them seem genuine, well, as genuine as these types of movies can usually seem. Hence the voyeuristic ‘amusement’ enhances even more. The main reason for that is because you can’t stay indifferent to some
scenes. Doesn’t matter if it’s on screen or not.
So, as a viewer, especially someone who watches slasher horrors on a regular basis, you are sick and tired of
the typical ‘’Oh, no, our car is totaled, we are gonna stay at this old ass inn and wait for help while the creepy, raggedy-ass old guy vets us’’
and this movie provides us originality and it’s kind of a novelty, to a degree.
The gas station thing and the family road trip aspects can be considered as cliche. Also, I wanna point out the fact that they believed the old man, even though they have talked to him for a brief period of time and don’t know his true intentions.
However, the majority of the movie isn’t portrayed as cliche and shallow as slasher movies usually are.

We can clearly see character development in both the young, rebellious kid and the son-in-law (who is, in my opinion, the lead character here — although he didn’t appear to be at the beginning of the movie) who go through thick and thin in this hellacious desert.
After losing the leader of the pack, who was an ex-detective, appearing to be the alpha of this group, they get left with an edgy 15-year-old,
a pacifist who moans about every little, silly thing, a spoiled brat (the daughter), an infant and, the only sane person in the group, the mother.
What are their odds? Who’s going down next? Are they going down in an infamous ‘suspense and keep slashing them until their blood is spattered all over the damn desert’?
The thing with the killings, is that some of them happened so rapidly, in a spur of the moment. So for that reason, you are flabbergasted, petrified, you are caught off guard and of course, you want some answers, right?

If you decide to watch this movie (assuming you haven’t done that yet), you will be happy to know that there are survivors!
Yes, survivors, plural! How many slasher movies can you name that end up with the ending credits rolling up while a handful of
smiling survivors limb through the desert, overcoming the odds?
Not much, I suppose.
The father dies a horrible death — he gets hogtied and burned on a bonfire and painfully moans as his family rushes to help him.
There are very few scenes in this genre that can affect you as much as this scene can.
The daughter gets raped, they take the kid away and kill the mother and the older daughter.
As far as the acting goes, I am not seeing any botches or lack of acting skills — speaking as a layman, of course.

This is when the character development starts kicking in. — The boy and son-in-law take matters into their own hands and wake up their primal, animalistic instincts. The survival instinct.
All of them are either slaughtered, set up on fire, raped, or permanently damaged. On top of that, the infant child is taken.
What can they really do? Well, they can do everything in their power to take the baby, and fight for their lives. After going to their lair, the shook-up father of the baby goes on a rampage mode, not caring one bit about his demeanor, (how in hell did he do that? I believe he doesn’t have an answer to that question either) and overcomes all the odds and saves his kid!

The point that I am making is, the almost perfect pacing and plot culmination movie was on point.
You feel disgusted by blood and gore, but not too much, no.
The director cut the horrific scenes at just perfect times. — The scenes make us feel flabbergasted, repulsed, but it’s not making us vomit, or say ‘’omg, that’s just too much, stop it’’. In one scene you see, what appears to be an enraged leader of the pack who gets obliterated by the exploding RV. In another scene, you see someone who resembles one of the ‘Dragonballz’ villains, chasing the frightened guy with an axe. The possibilities of deaths in such movies are endless, yet the directors and writers reach out for the plainest of the choices. This movie has a handful of executions.
The be all end all is that the underdogs finally get the upper hand after one of their nemesis, has a change of heart and makes herself a scapegoat in this downward spiral of a story, and saves the baby and her father, after pushing one of her own, and herself along the way, down a humongous cliff. Which is, also one of the things you rarely see in such movies. — The villain makes a grand, ultimate sacrifice.

And, at last, the pacifist, the moaner, the wallflower, has dug down deep and awoken the beast. I am not sure he even knows how he did it…
The beast that each and every one of us has, when our loved ones are in danger. He decided he’s not gonna play ball and crumble under pressure, as, supposedly many people before him have.
No matter about the gruesome beatdown he took, and the everlasting trauma on his psyche it’s gonna have.
He did what needed to be done, and the story ends in a poignant kind of way. Although, it is strange to say that the poignance has
been permeated throughout the entire movie (the missing baby, the burning person, the rape, the son-in-law exposing himself in the lair of disfigured creatures), considering these types of movies are almost never that.

All in all, to encapsulate this movie for the ones not interested in a long-ass review — This is a captivating, gruesome and at times eerie slasher horror with good pacing and just enough gore and a storyline that makes you empathize with this unfortunate family. The movie resembles to a vast majority of its predecessors, but only to a degree. Portrayal of miserable, helpless, middle-class, law-abiding citizens, whose lives go on a downward spiral. They scratched, clawed and fought their ways to a safe haven.
If you are a ‘die hard slasher’ fan, taking a wide berth on this one wouldn’t be a great idea.

The ending scene could be giving us an insight that the survivors of this horrific story are in for another ‘’treat’’ as the binoculars
from an unidentified person’s/creature’s grip zooms out… The only adjacent thing to the survivors, is an immense desert.
Did they escape or not, we’ll have to watch the sequel to find that out.

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐+

Damir Sljivic aka Damirowsky