The Hills Have Eyes 2

Last year's remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" by Alexandre Aja was one of the best horror remakes I had seen in awhile. In a sea of endless remakes, many of them of horror movies of our past, have been crap (and that's being polite). The only other one I can think of that was effective and came out fairly recently was "Dawn Of The Dead" directed by Zack Snyder. Not necessarily better than the original, but just as effective and taut in its own way. Of course, no one may ever beat the granddaddy of all horror remakes, "John Carpenter's The Thing." That appears to be the remake that many horror films aspire to be today.

Anyway, after the success of last year's remake, 20^th Century Fox created a new company called Fox Atomic Pictures which specializes in horror movies and other offbeat films. So of course, we had to have "The Hills Have Eyes 2." Ironically enough, there was actually a sequel to Wes Craven's original film that came out in the 80's. I never saw that one, but I heard it was god awful, and that even Craven himself hated it. The fact that it is not too easy to find at your local video store should be a clue to its quality.

For a moment, I found myself getting excited about this one. A remake of a sequel! Alright! Just when you thought Hollywood was completely out of films to remake, they moved on to remaking sequels! Brilliant! There are a lot of sequels out there that are crying for a remake, if for nothing else, to rid the stench that the original sequel left over its predecessor. Case in point, "The Exorcist II: The Heretic." That one was as bad as the original one was brilliant! Of course, it didn't really help that Warner Brothers hired a man (John Boorman) who hated the original movie to direct the sequel.