A regular suburban family the Carters take the scenic route through the New Mexico desert only to crash their car and trailer, leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere. Being all manly, dad Bob (Levine) heads back along the road to the petrol station they passed a while back for a tow-truck, while liberal pacifist Doug (Stanford) takes off in the opposite direction searching for help, leaving young Bobby (Byrd) in charge of the trailer and the women. When Doug returns after nightfall to find Bob still missing, alarm bells start ringing and before the night is out, the family are beset by a small band of grotesquely deformed men...
With all the soulless remakes and pointless sequels we are overrun with at the moment, it is refreshing to see this Wes Craven remake stand on its own. Opening with a sweet '60s tune over a montage of stills of deformed people, it's obvious that director Aja is aiming for more than just scares. Although he does inject the expected jumpy moments, he is hoping for repulsion over terror. The Hills Have Eyes is cut from the same hide as Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Stanford trapped in a bath full of dismembered corpses) and Straw Dogs (the specks-wearing liberal pacifist driven to violence to overcome) and like Hooper and Peckinpah, Aja hopes that the audience will abandon all hope of rescue for the participant; a ploy he pulls off with aplomb. Where he lets himself down is when he is asked to up the repugnance ante, Aja takes his finger off the panic button and his 'the-perfect-nuclear-family-dream-has-turned-on-itself' subtext gets a little muddled and lost amongst all the blood, but there is enough of the latter to keep you gore-mongers interested.
