The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The remake, whilst not particularly great, was tolerable and did showcase some excellent use of horror by perpetuating gore and strong sexual threat. This sequel does uphold the latter elements, albeit cheaply, but still greatly pales in comparison. After the events of its predecessor, a squad of national guard members are tasked in investigating the disappearance of scientists in Sector 16. A testing facility for atomic bombs, so you know what that means...! Mutants residing in caverns looking for female women to rape and increase the population of the grotesque abnormalities that are hidden from society. Nothing else to it to be honest. Some scenes of body gore, including fingering a cranium to pull out brains or a survivor hiding in a toilet (literally in it), were well executed and forced me to twitch with anguish. Excessive? Perhaps, but entertainingly horrible nonetheless. Unfortunately, the characters are dumb. They might be rookies, but 12-year olds have more common sense and intelligence that this entire unit. "They're picking us off one by one!" as they continue to split up and coincidentally get slaughtered. "Calm down, you'll get us killed!" as they haphazardly shout everything whilst slamming on metal blast doors, coincidentally alerting all the nearby mutants. "You killed my baby!" screams a woman from a terrorising family as the clueless trainee soldier approaches the individual who coincidentally has grenades strapped to her. You get my point. It's incredibly stupid. An expendable cast with no personality and zero memorability. Choppy editing with minimal direction. Less than ninety minutes long and still felt like it dragged, particularly the forgettable second act. And it ends with a scene of a soldier smashing a mutant's groin with a sledgehammer. Need I say more? It's cheap, disposable and derivative. Just stick with the original and remake.

This is probably one of the worst horror movies out there. It was bad enough that there was a remake, and even worse, that there's a sequel to the remake! This is movie is crap. Do not watch it.

A group of raw and wet behind the ears National Guard trainees run afoul of a family of savage predatory mutants in the desert. Director Martin Weisz, working from a compact script by Wes and Jonathan Craven, relates the engrossing story at a snappy pace, maintains a go-for-the-throat gritty tone throughout (both the opening monster birth scene and a harsh rape sequence are quite nasty and hard to watch), delivers a handy helping of in-your-face unflinching graphic gore, makes fine use of the sprawling and desolate desert location, and generates a good deal of tension. The solid acting by the capable cast keeps this movie humming: Michael McMillian as wimpy pacifist Napoleon, Daniella Alonso as the sassy Missy, Jessica Stroup as the feisty Amber, Lee Thompson Young as the gutsy Delmar, Flex Alexander as the hard-nosed Sarge, Jacob Vargas as the hot-tempered Crank, and Jeff Kober as the foulmouthed Redding. Moreover, the mutants are really fearsome and grotesque, with Michael Bailey Smith as brutish patriarch Papa Hades, Derek Myers as the vicious Chameleon, Gaspar Szabo as the relentless Sniffer, and David Reynolds as the kindly and helpful Hansel rating as the most memorable of the beastly bunch. Both Sam McCurdy's crisp widescreen cinematography and the spirited shuddery score by Trevor Morris are up to par. A satisfying follow-up.

My opinion on the HILLS HAVE EYES films varies. The first one I saw was the modern remake, which blew me away; sure, it told a familiar story of humans battling mutants, but the direction was strong, the violence visceral, and the pacing remarkable. It was a powerful, shocking film. Next up I saw the Craven original and, like a lot of Craven films, it disappointed me. I found it dated, flawed, and a film that paled in comparison next to the remake, which is unusual. My third exposure is the sequel to the remake, which takes the general premise and utterly wastes it on another ALIENS-inspired storyline of a squad of soldiers entering enemy territory and finding themselves getting picked off one by one by the villains.My biggest beef is that this film has so much wasted potential. Sure, there are outrageous gore effects occurring frequently in the film, but when they happen to uninteresting, uninspired characters, you feel like you're playing a computer game rather than getting involved in a real movie. The biggest disappointment is the script, which is obviously a rush job designed to cash in on the first film's success. Each and every soldier is depicted as either an idiot, a bully, or a thug, and they don't seem to have more than a couple of brain cells between them. Remember, these are the guys we're supposed to root for. Even the victims in a nameless Friday the 13th sequel of the '80s had more characterisation than this! We end up with a load of people scurrying around in some nondescript cave system, and even that's ripping off THE DESCENT. The acting's poor across the board, and the mutants are laughable rather than the fear-inducing creatures of the first film. I mean, the guy who's got that stony skin...is he really supposed to be menacing? They also die far too easily as well. I suppose one bonus is the short running time, but even that seems padded out to the max, throwing in lots of pointless sequences and leaving genuine sub-plots unfocused and hanging (the friendly mutant, for instance – what's the deal with him? He's like that guy in THE GOONIES, but I want to find out more about him!). This means that the only reason to watch THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 is to see an extended sequence of somebody beating someone else's head in with a rock.