'The Hills Have Eyes part II' isn't the lowers of the low you can go with a sequel of a good film, but it probably is pretty close. In some ways it felt almost as a parody of the original and that surprised me, as it is made by the same man who made the first one: Wes Craven.
From some freak co-incidence one of the feral cannibals has survived from the first movie, even thought we saw em' all get killed, and this time he's accompanied by his uncle, which was something of surprise, as he wasn't mentioned in the first film and the daddy of original head of the cannibal family mentioned only having two children, a daughter who died and the bloodthirsty psychopath son. But then again maybe he was lying.
But okay, this time the group of would be victims are a group of motorcyclist in a way to a competition to seal their fate (literally this time). They are accompanied by Ruby (Janus Blythe) who actually is the daughter of the feral family, now civilized with the help of the survivors of the Carter family. This story short, the buss has an accident and they are forced to stay near the silver mine occupied no other than Pluto and ol' uncle Reaper.
The whole film is just idiotic. Not that the first one was any brain food, but this is one is just one huge cashing in attempt. There's lots and lots of flashbacks from the original film, showing off how the Carter's snuffed the cannibals. That would have been appropriate for a quick montage, but now I felt, that the scenes were put in just to make the movie a bit longer. They also substituted for the lack of bigger cannibal family.
As it often is the actions of the people stranded among psychotic people were far from the normal behavior of people in that kind of situation. People went out to cuddle even though they knew, that their friends were missing.
The acting was pretty horrible, and this time there wasn't even good atmosphere to back it up.
All in all THHE:PII felt very forced effort and maybe that's something the movie really was. Craven did it directly after 'The Nightmare on Elm Street', which is a movie, that provided one of the most known horror characters of cinematic history. Maybe Craven felt upping the ante with one of his older creations. All I can say he's failed. Horribly.
Rating: 2 of 10
Camp Rating: 5 of 10