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Beware mutants who suddenly drop by for dinner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Everybody’s heard of Meals on Wheels, but I never heard of meals that drove THEMSELVES to the dinner table.
That’s what you get with the remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” where a family drives through the New Mexico desert straight into the mouths of mutant cannibals.
Mutant cannibals are always OK by me — like the ones in “Wrong Turn.” But while the man-eaters in “Hills” got deformed from atom-bomb tests, the ones in “Wrong Turn” got that way from [making love to] their first cousins and brothers and sisters. Call it “The Appalachians Have Eyes.” (Yeah: three eyes, two noses and one wide, gaping mouth.)
The dad of the (nonmutant) family in “Hills” is played by Ted Levine, the dude that tucked his junk and did that “I’d [Make Love to] Me” dance in “Silence of the Lambs.” If he’s one of the GOOD guys, you know things are gonna get twisted.
It’s his silver wedding anniversary, and he’s celebrating by driving his kids and wife (Kathleen Quinlan) to California. You can tell that if she’d known that’s how she’d spend her 25th anniversary, there wouldn’t’ve been a FIRST one.
Even their son-in-law Doug (Aaron Stanford) goes, “Why couldn’t we fly like normal people?” Well, because you don’t usually get eaten by the flight attendants when you’re on Delta — so it wouldn’t be much of a movie, that’s why.
Doug’s along for the ride in the family’s renovated ‘88 Airstream, along with his wife Lynne (Vinessa Shaw), their baby, and Lynne’s kid brother Bobby (Dan Byrd) and sister Brenda (Emilie de Ravin).
The lovely Miss de Ravin plays Claire on the TV show “Lost.” But when the Airstream breaks its axle smack in the bull’s-eye of Hungry Cannibal Central, she totally turns into Maggie Grace — the chick that played [female dog]-goddess Shannon on the show. While Brenda’s family is trying to figure out how to get help, she suntans in a bikini top (thank you!) and gripes, “We are so [made love to].”
No [excrement], sis. Anyway, when night falls, the cannibals come out, and things get busy — like in any kitchen at dinnertime. Turns out they have some real inventive recipes, like Dog Haunch Tartare and Père Flambée (that’s French — impressed?)
Speaking of French, that’s what director Alexandre Aja is. He made the splatterific “High Tension,” so I figured if anybody HAD to remake Wes Craven’s 1977 classic, Alex was the man!
So anyway, when the stranded family in the movie figures out they’re in deep [you know what], Dad squabbles with Mom, who’s a religious type. He pulls out his guns and says, “I’ll take my bullets over your prayers any day.” But bullets don’t do squat if you fire ‘em in the dark or running like a fool without ever stopping to aim — which is what these doofuses do over and over again.
When we finally get a look at the mutant cannibals, they’re pretty butt-ugly. And there’s a real uncomfortable scene where a couple of them get frisky with the two sisters. It reminded me of my ex, LaDonna, when we had to go to the mountains every year for her Potter Family Reunion, and there was too much beer. Yeah, “Wrong Turn” all over again.
Funny thing is, when I went to buy my ticket to “Hills,” before I could hand her my money, the lady at the box office told me I maybe oughta think twice. She said they’d had a lot of walk-outs with this movie, and people wanting their money back.
I mean, I understand how she was trying to do some Consumer Reports kind of service. But it would be a shame to turn away people that appreciate what this movie delivers — like a head blasted clean off by a shotgun, fingers getting axed, or somebody waking up locked in a meat locker full of human body parts.
I mean, we just made it through Oscar season and all its eat-your-spinach movies. It’s time to get back to the multiplex and enjoy the red-blooded kind of movies that we REALLY wanta see — am I right?
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