I've started writing this review before the movie has even finished, but it doesn't matter. The Hills Have Eyes 2 is a poorly acted, poorly written piece of crap, full of stereotypical and unbelievable characters, lame action sequences and cheesy villains. If my buddy in China had bought the film like I asked him to, it still would have been a waste of a dollar.
The first Hills Have Eyes, and by that I mean the movie that came out last year, was pretty decent. It wasn't great by any means, but it was one f**ked up movie and gory beyond belief. Where some movies try to be good by just throwing in some random gore, Alexandre Aja, the director of the 2006 version, embraced blood, guts and other disgusting things and actually took his film above and beyond because of said things. It was the goriest movie I had seen in years, even decades, and aside from that, it offered up some pretty creepy yet slightly believable mutated hillbillies.
Jump ahead to The Hills Have Eyes 2 and everything has changed. We have a different director in the form of Martin Weisz, who clearly has no idea what he's doing, different writers, albeit in the form of the original writer/director Wes Craven, and a whole new cast. Nothing goes right in the movie, however, as the movie has very little gore compared to the first one, the hillbillies have been turned more into "monsters", and the writing is all over the place. The movie is about as exciting as amateur curling, and I blame Weisz for not carrying through and delivering us some much-needed gore. Don't get me wrong - the film does have its moments - but there is nothing gritty or believable about the film in any way.
Still, the real problem is the screenplay, and it's sort of surprising that Wes Craven destroyed his creation in such a fashion. The movie follows a group of soldiers who enter the desert on a training mission and end up falling victim to the radioactive people that live in the hills. Unfortunately, this is the lamest, dumbest and most pathetic group of soldiers you will ever see, as each and every one ends up arguing, whining, complaining or what not throughout the course of the film. Where there are a few good-looking women, none of the characters are believable, likeable nor memorable, and you really won't even notice which ones get picked off throughout the film. The dialogue is sad - especially that of the sergeant in charge - and nothing the soldiers do is remotely intelligent. I could have killed more mutants with a spork than these guys can with automatic weapons.
Thank God, the movie just ended. What a waste of an hour and a half. The highlight of the film is a hillbilly rape scene, and rape scenes are never pleasant. The final shot of the movie is extremely stupid, too.
Martin Weisz should never be allowed to direct a movie again. And I've lost all faith in Wes Craven - his time has come and past.
2 comments:
Erik, the trouble is you just dont have the facts, anyone can slag people off but you should do some research. M weisz has directed hundreds of music videos, for people like p diddy, korn, nickelback, brandy, sisqo, mel b etc, also his first feature won a ton of awards and was banned in germany for its subject matter. Halfway through filming hills 2, mr w craven came down and took over, he re wrote stuff, he re shot stuff, he shot additional footage after the principal shooting had finished. So the film you saw bears little resemblance to what we shot. No im not M weisz, but i did work in the camera dept on this film. Its all about what you know!!!
Thanks Anonymous. I more so blame Wes Craven anyway, though I still didn't see enough to suggest that the director has no part in the movie ending up the way it did.
I also haven't seen any mention of Wes Craven taking over reshoots, etc.
Still, thanks for the input!
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