Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes Part 2

• 27th Mar 2011

Ever since I was a young and impressionable horror fan, I’ve always looked forward to seeking out strange oddities from well known directors. In the case of Wes Craven – a man who’s had his fair share of duds – this could well be the icing on the cake. Even now, as a self-confessed hardened Craven-phile, this film is an arduous watch.

So where to begin with this schlock-fest? Well, to start with the script feels rushed and poorly written and it’s hard to imagine that the same man who wrote The Last House on The Left and the original The Hills Have Eyes could have churned this out. The performances by the majority of the cast – barring cult movie legend Michael Berryman – are beyond substandard. And there’s also very little gore or standout scares so it’s even less enjoyable.

This is a film that ventures so far into camp you wonder if it should even be considered a horror film. The answer’s no. It’s so far from containing and genuine terrors (an achievement considering it’s about mutated cannibals) that a first viewing will be enough to send most viewers into convulsions of unintentional laughter.

Picking up eight years after the first horrific encounter with the desert dwelling cannibals, young Ruby – now calling herself Rachel – is with a group of dirt bike enthusiasts attempting to attend a local race. They make a very large error of judgement and take a wrong turning, leading them back into the clutches of the remaining Jupiter Clan.

Every moment of this film feels like a comedy as it’s filled to the brim with awful dialogue, lacklustre scares and moments of genuine character stupidity. You won’t be shouting at the screen “Don’t go in there”; it’ll be more along the lines of “How did this get made!”, “Why am I still watching this?” and “No amount of alcohol will make this better”.

Any film which has to resort to a flashback from the dog in the first film clearly has quality control problems. As a horror fan I genuinely thought I’d seen it all, but this has to take the (dog) biscuit. And a dog suffering from post-traumatic stress is unfortunately the highlight of this film. One can’t help but wonder, was Craven hitting the bottle during the scriptwriting stages? This isn’t even in the so-bad-it’s-good guilty pleasure category. It’s just plain bad and utterly painful to watch. It’s hard to imagine that Craven went from the seminal A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984 to this inept horror a year later. It lacks both social commentary and violent physicality with which to cause any genuine shock to an audience.

It’s hard to see how this can come from such a well crafted filmmaker as Craven. Over the years he’s tried his hand at many different and varied genres. Maybe, just maybe, this is a stab at comedy spoof. Who knows?

As it stands, The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 is pretty much devoid of any merit or recommendation.  If it wasn’t for the jaw-dropping moment of a dog’s flashback it would be little more than an instantly forgettable sequel. It turned out Craven quickly disowned the film and as it’s not hard to see why.

Dominic O’Brien