Provided we draw a veil over the whole sorry incident that is The Fog, Hollywood’s infernal recycling scheme hasn’t done too much damage to the carnage classics of the ‘70s. Though largely pointless, recent remakes of Dawn Of The Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre haven’t been nearly as disgraceful as we might have hoped and The Hills Have Eyes is infinitely superior to either.
Alexandre Aja, an actual proper director (he’s French, you know…) last seen blooding up our screens with his debut film Switchblade Romance, has done sterling work updating Wes Craven’s seminal 1977 nasty. (The horror auteur produced this 2006 edition.) As an All-American family venture into the Nevada desert only to run afoul of a merry band of psychotic mutant cannibals, Aja gets visceral on their asses. Here, the killing is merciless, the gristle is fresh and the rape scenes, though coy enough to make it into multiplexes, are as revolting as they come. It really makes you wonder what was in the 40 minutes they took out.
Admittedly, there’s a bit too much political subtext going on. (The mutants reside between subterranean caverns and a grotesque parody of an Eisenhower-era street, where they belt out the national anthem and make imaginative use of miniature Stars and Stripes.) But the pornographic punishments heaped upon the film’s protagonist – no white shirt since Die Hard has been quite so encrusted with bodily fluids – more than compensate.
It’s the absolute best we could have hoped for from a Hills Have Eyes minus Michael Berryman.