The 2006 remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" was a decent slasher-in-the-desert flick; forgettable but entertaining nevertheless. So here we have the 2007 sequel.
A group of National Guard trainees go to a mysterious camp in the New Mexican desert to resupply and train, but they find it abandoned. They soon discover that the barren "hills" are infested with a bunch of hideous mutant cannibals. Can they get out alive?
I was actually impressed with the serious and sometimes moving vibe this film has. It may be a gory slasher flick, but the filmmakers make it respectable. The cussing-every-other-word tends to bring the respectability down, but I was in the Marines and this was how enlisted guys talked in the field, generally speaking. By "moving" I refer to the love & loyalty that members of the team reveal for each other over the course of the story and the accompanying score.
Some complain about the stupid mistakes the soldiers make but, remember, they're trainees, and National Guardsmen at that, not career soldiers. Besides, mistakes are always made in the heat of life-or-death combat.
I heard someone else complain about Jessica Stroup being too good-looking to be a soldier, but I've seen some hot enlisted babes. One girl I knew from high school enlisted in the army and she sent me a pic of her at an Army party in Europe wearing a bunny costume and she was as hot as any Hollywood starlet you'd care to name (she's now a cougar Colonel, lol).
The problem with this movie is the thin plot. My description above is the entire story. The whole film's an intense survival situation.
Those who like gory slasher or survival flicks should like this, especially if you prefer military-oriented stories. I'm only giving it a fairly low rating because it's not a film I'm anxious to see again. There's just not enough depth, epic-ness or hot women for my tastes (although Jessica Stroup has a really cute face), but that's just me.
The film was shot in Morroco (of all places) and runs a short-but-sweet 89 minutes.
The DVD I saw is the unrated version.
GRADE: C+ (or B for gory slasher fans)
