Isn't anyone else tired of that old cliché' where a nearly dead person shows up in a horror film, gives us some informations, and then blasts his head off for no apparent reason? I know I am.
The sad thing is that it's use in this film is worthless. If you have seen the first film (the first remake I should say) then the information given is completely worthless, because you would have already known it. I guess, you can that it isn't worthless to the main characters..but then why does the idiot shoot himself in the head? Wouldn't he want to live? Sure, he would have died anyway..
This is the second film to be titled "The Hills Have Eyes II." The first being the sequel to the original 70's film. This is where it gets a little complicated for someone like me. See, I'm probably part of minority of people my age that even knew there was a HHE2 to begin with, much less an original HHE1. And now that we have a sequel to a remake and the fact that this sequel is named exactly as the sequel to the original HHE1...it just makes it worse! But anyways..
Wes Craven's original Hills Have Eyes was decent. In the end, though, the idea was better than the presentation, but he most likely had a low budget. To be quite honest, Wes Craven isn't that good of a horror director. He's only made a few good horror movies (Nightmare on Elm St., New Nightmare), a few alright ones (Scream) and a bunch of horrible ones (Cursed, Shocker, Vampire in Brooklyn). Oh yeah, and he made Swamp Thing, as well...but the original HHE2 falls under the latter category. I've only seen a few minutes, but it was terrible.
Now he has co-written the new HHE2..and it's such a disappointment! Last year's HHE remake was even better than the original film. It was tense. I guess it had to do with the fact that the main characters were a family, and not a bunch of beer and pot and sex crazy teenagers. It made us feel dirty. For the first hour, we were in hell, and finally in the last few moments, the good guys got revenge on the bad guys and it felt good..
This new film has no tension. No suspense whatsoever. Just violent things happening to mostly stupid people. There is hardly any menacing presence here. Just ugly hobos hiding under rocks.
I'm getting tired of horror movies where people die because of the stupid mistakes they keep making. It was just the other day that I watching "Deep Blue Sea" where Samuel L. Jackson kept on walking around the water, while giving the speech, and then he gets eaten by a shark, only because the idiot stayed to close to the water..something that nobody would do in the given situation! Here is the exact same thing. People go off by themselves to take a leak even though they know people are dying..seriously, couldn't a potty break wait? And then when you think people would have learned, someone else goes of by themselves! Seriously, isn't more scary when the characters are bringing their A-game and still losing? I would think so...
It even under delivers. It should have made the first remake look like "The Fog" remake (which was less menacing than an episode of "Becker"). More bad guys. More time in the caves. More tension. More of everything.
But it actually downgrades. Less bad guys. No tension. Sure we have more time in the caves, but not a whole lot happens there. In the end, it only seems like there is two or three bad guys. The last film made it seem like a whole tribe of people. Where is this tribe? Who keeps on watching them through binoculars? Seriously, these are the things this film should have brought us, but it ends with the exact same promise that the last film gave us, with that exact same "being watched" scene. Come on! I'll give the devil it's due. The look of the film is good..but thats it.
I don't even think fans of gore will like this..though I'm probably wrong! There is gore (though most of it is sped-up while in the dark), but without the tension, and characters you even care about..the gore does nothing in my book! In the end, you're not frightened. You;re not shocked (unless you're an 8 year old girl). You don't even feel like you have seen anything new.