Recently Hollywood has mined gold from remakes of 1970s horror movies, including “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “When a Stranger Calls” and “Dawn of the Dead.” Most of these have been dreadful, although the new version of “The Hills Have Eyes,” opening today, at least has style and few ideas in its rotted head.
But here’s the problem with these things. Those 1970s horror pictures, some of which were truly disturbing and powerful, were born of need. Shot on tiny budgets, raw and nervy, they were outlaw projects that captured something at loose in the culture. They played drive-ins and cheap theaters and caught on by word of mouth.
The remakes are slicker and glossier. They’re released by major studios to thousands of theaters on the same day. Some of them even have name actors, for crying out loud.
In other words, the original outlaw spirit is gone, replaced by nothing but the knowledge that horror movies have been opening in the No. 1 slot in the weekly box office. These titles are recognizable and exploitable, and the core moviegoing audience wants to see them.
Which brings us to “The Hills Have Eyes,” which began life as a 1977 picture directed by Wes Craven, who would go on to launch the “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream” franchises. This remake hands the property to Alexandre Aja, a hotdog filmmaker from France; his “High Tension” was a big international hit.
The film follows an all-American family, the Carters, who have foolishly opted for a side road during their trip from Cleveland to San Diego. It is always a bad idea to do this, but doubly so when the terrain in question is heat-parched desert, and triply so when this particular desert has a history of atomic testing.
But onward they plunge, into the grasp of a mutated family of weirdos hiding in the scrubby hills. A slow build-up is followed by a gruesome sequence of the mutants descending upon the unsuspecting family, with the survivors battling it out.
Aja has a good eye, and the film gets into some potentially interesting territory when we visit the remnants of a fake town, inhabited by mannequins, constructed for the long-ago atomic tests. All of which is well executed blood ‘n’ gore, but pointless.
The ideas have been explored before. Sci-fi movies from the 1950s were using atomic testing as an explanation for all manner of horrors, so the notion is a little quaint these days.
The cast is better than average for a horror picture, and the actors keep things afloat for a while. Ted Levine and Kathleen Quinlan are the parents; Aaron Stanford (the kid from “Tadpole”) is the liberal, bespectacled peacenik son-in-law who rises to the occasion when the creeps come out.
As in “High Tension,” Aja gets the job done without rising above utter unpleasantness. There’s a lesson here for horror fans: look to Internet buzz about unknown directors and low-budget movies, because the remakes are played out.
“The Hills Have Eyes” H
Lousy remake: Another played-out remake of a 1970s horror movie title, this one taking on Wes Craven’s 1977 low-budget shocker. The outlaw vibe is gone, so we numbly watch as a family stranded in the desert is wiped out by radiation-altered mutants.
Rated: R for language, violence
Now showing: Everett 9, Galaxy 12, Marysville 14, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Varsity, Woodinville 12, Cascade Mall
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