See also: THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006)

A group of eight rookie soldiers and their arrogant sarge (Alexander) arrive in the remote New Mexico desert to deliver supplies to a group of nuclear scientists, but the base is eerily empty. They see things moving up in them there hills, so they go investigate. Soon the A-bomb-test mutants are picking them off one by one, in increasingly gruesome ways. But their main goal is to grab the two women (Stroup and Alonso) for breeding purposes.

And that's about as complicated as the film gets. There's none of the character development of the original remake--either in the mutants or their prey. These people are stereotypical horror movie cliches, including the brainy outsider (McMillian), high achiever (Young), meathead (Vargas) and pretty boy (Strik). The fact that it's the victims who are carrying the guns does add a nice twist, as does the film's refreshing sense of logic, in that the dead stay on the floor. Mostly.

German director Weisz directs with unusual skill for the genre, building suspense with suggestion and insinuation that freak us out far more than mere jolts. On the other hand, once the action moves into a series of abandoned mineshafts, the film gets murky and convoluted, relying much more heavily on extreme gore, brutality and ickiness. The deranged villains' goal is to divide and dismember, which is rather repetitive. And the plot falters when the remaining soldiers run across a friendly mutant who appears to be Eric Stoltz from Mask.

The dialog is also fairly boneheaded, as the over-macho characters continually state the blindingly obvious ("They're picking us off one by one!"). Unlike the first film, we really don't care about any of these simplistic characters, although they're very nicely played by the fresh-faced (and very fit) cast. And the sharp direction makes it well worth seeing for genre fans.

themes, strong violence, grisliness, language

19.Mar.07