‘The lucky ones died first’
The Hills Have Eyes is a 2006 action horror film and remake of Wes Craven‘s 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes. Written by filmmaking partners Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur of the French horror film Haute Tension, and directed by Aja, the film follows a family which becomes the target of a group of murderous mutants after their car breaks down in the desert.
The film earned $15.5 million in its opening weekend in the U.S.,where it was originally rated NC-17 for strong gruesome violence, but was later edited down to an R-rating. An unrated Blu-ray release has since been issue. A sequel, The Hills Have Eyes 2, (not to be confused with The Hills Have Eyes Part II from 1984) was released in March 23, 2007.
Wes Craven, director and writer of the original film, considered a remake after he saw the success of other horror remakes such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror. The search then began for filmmakers to helm the project. Marianne Maddalena, Craven’s long time producing partner, came across Alexandre Aja and his art director/collaborator Grégory Levasseur who had previously made the French slasher film Haute Tension. After showing the film to Craven and the rest of the production crew, they were impressed with the pair.
Prior to filming, Aja and Levasseur had already conceived an idea for the mutants’ appearance. “We based all our descriptions and directions on real documents, pictures and footage that we found on the effects of nuclear fallout in Chernobyl and Hiroshima”, explained Aja. The Hills Have Eyes utilized the KNB EFX Group Inc. who had done previous work on projects such as The Walking Dead and Sin City.
Wikipedia | IMDb | Tumblr Related: High Tension | Maniac | P2 | The Hills Have Eyes | The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Buy The Hills Have Eyes and The Hills Have Eyes 2 on bargain Blu-ray Disc from Amazon.co.uk
“The Hills Have Eyes is an entertaining horror film that not only provides loads of grisly images for the hardcore gorehounds, but also manages to make an intelligent statement about the resilience of human nature itself. Call it “ugly, splatter-porn” if you will but I call The Hills Have Eyes a refreshingly good remake. I think Aja actually made some marked improvements over the original Wes Craven film. The remake is a different film from Craven’s, but that’s one of the things that makes The Hills Have Eyes (2006) so effective.” Scott Lecter, DVD Talk
“While it’s not a bad film by any means, like most remakes Hills is nowhere near as good or as remarkable as the original. Gore fans will love this flick’s extremely violent scenes, but those looking for genuine scares will be left unfulfilled. Hills goes out of its way to terrorize its audience but rather than take the cerebral highway, it goes for the gross-out shortcut, and breaks down halfway home.” Movie Metropolis
Posted by Will Holland
Horrorpedia.com is a non-profit website. Please help us cover our web-hosting costs by buying from our affiliate links. Thank you.
Categories: 2000s, French horror, gory, maniac, mutant, psychopath, rural horror
Leave a Reply