The Hills Have Eyes 2: Critic Reviews

A retro horror-comedy featuring quick deaths and cheapo-looking gore, with a few dorky laughs and gross-outs but not so many scares.

One man-versus-mutant dust-up ends with a sledgehammer to the groin. Enough said.

Pure genre-pic boredom.

The new movie is a pre-combat nightmare, whereas the first -- Alexandre Aja's effective 2006 remake of Craven's low-rent 1977 original -- was pure post-nuclear paranoia.

For anyone other than hardcore gore-hounds, this flipbook of deliberately invoked global-unrest horrors, from friendly-fire killings to rape as a breeding weapon, is effectively mean and unrelenting -- and pretty far from fun.

Written, disappointingly, by Wes Craven and his son Jonathan, this limp sequel to last year's remake of Wes' 1977 original feels like the work of a guy who's spent a few too many days lost in the desert.

Although the ads warn, 'The lucky ones die fast,' the truth is, 'The smart ones walk out early.'

It's no better or worse than most films of its genre.

Helmer Martin Weisz, whose background is largely in musicvideos, meets the challenge of creating dread in broad daylight, before the entire cast of soldiers and carnivores heads underground, into the warren of mines and tunnels where the mutants dwell.

In case you miss what's happening, one soldier wails, 'Oh, man, we're gettin' picked off one by one, here.'

It's not scary, not novel.

Director Martin Weisz does an adequate job of maintaining the movie's tension and momentum, but the lack of compelling characters and the unusual level of nastiness makes this an arduous mission for all involved.

After this disgrace, it's time to shut the hills' eyes for good.

The only folks jumping out of their seats are the ones going for a drink refill.

...could have been more than a pale shadow of the original if the filmmakers had taken their time...

There is not any plot worth discussing: people go into a desert, some die. The end.

It sucks balls.

...dull and interminable...

Well, no, they don't. If they did and if they could see, they would have read the script, passed on it, and we all would have been better for it.

Better made than most low budget and derivative movies of its genre, but it just doesn't have enough to stand out as anything more than an improvement upon those dregs.

This horror fanatic doesn't have room for Craven in his genre anymore. Collect your cash and call it a day already, Wes...

a film as bloodily pointless as the current conflict in Iraq that it so unsubtly allegorises.

Maybe it's just time to put an end to this mutant circle of life, or at least send it straight to DVD from now on.