That said, while it was never going to be an installment of Movies That Suck, upon re-watching it again for this review, my opinion on it has softened to the point where I now feel that this movie is simply okay and fine for what it is. I still don't love it and don't see myself ever watching it again after this, but it does have its merits, like the acting and characters (though the themes surrounding them don't feel quite as profound this time around), the location, the aforementioned gore effects, the very well-done digital work, and the action setpieces during the third act, as well as the fact that what I didn't find all that disturbing in the original does make me squirm in the way it's done here. But, again, I still feel that it would have been better had it not been so similar to the original, from the progression of the story and so many of the specific scenes right down to some of the lines of dialogue, and the atomic mutant angle, while definitely different, eliminates some of the creepiness that the original had going for it, as well as just being overdone in execution.
In the New Mexico desert, the site of nuclear tests conducted decades ago, a group of scientists checking for lingering radiation is slaughtered by a hideously-deformed, pickaxe-wielding man, their bodies dragged away on the back of their own truck. Some time later, Jeb, the manager of a remote gas station, awakens one morning to the sound of someone prowling around outside and, after investigating, returns to find a holdall on his doorstep, containing personal items and a box with a severed, human ear inside. He then has some customers show up: the Carter family, made up of Big Bob and Ethel, their teenage children Brenda and Bobby, their eldest daughter Lynn, her husband Doug Bukowski, their baby daughter Catherine, and the two family German shepherds, Beauty and Beast. They're on the way to San Diego for Bob and Ethel's silver anniversary and have decided to take a detour through New Mexico in order to see the desert. As they've stopped for gas, Bobby, while using an outhouse in the back, catches someone spying on him through the gaps in the wood, the same person who steals his red sweatshirt from the SUV towing the trailer. Bob asks Jeb for directions to the interstate, which he says is very far away, but as they're leaving, he mentions a "shortcut" through the hills, which they decide to take. However, they unknowingly hit a spike strip hidden in the sand, which punctures their SUV's tires and leaves them stranded in the middle of the searing hot desert. With the axle broken, no cellphone signal, and the CB radio unlikely to pick anyone up, Bob decides to walk back to the gas station, while Doug continues following the road. Little does the family know that they're being watched from the hills, which Bobby learns when he chases after Beauty when she gets loose, only to find her mutilated corpse after hearing her scream in pain. Meanwhile, Doug finds that the road dead ends at a massive bomb crater, one filled with the wrecks of numerous vehicles. That night, Bob makes it back to the gas station but, while looking for Jeb, finds the holdall in his office and newspaper clippings of nuclear tests in the area from years back, as well as the disappearances of families in the area over the years. He then finds Jeb, whom promptly commits suicide, and is attacked by a vicious man, who takes him back to his lair. Soon, the family finds themselves in a horrific battle for survival against a clan of mutated people who have taken to cannibalism, with Doug, in particular, being pushed to extreme lengths to save his beloved baby from becoming their next meal.
Marianne Maddalena, Craven's long-time producing partner, who first worked with him as an assistant on Deadly Friend and, starting with Shocker and save for My Soul To Take, produced every movie he directed from then on, was the one who suggested that Craven consider Alexandre Aja to direct the film. Her recommendation, of course, came because of High Tension, which really impressed Craven and the other producers when they saw it and made them instantly decide to go with Aja and his frequent collaborator, Gregory Levasseur. When they decided to take on the movie, which would be their first American project, the two of them wrote the screenplay, decided on the filming locations, and also came up with the idea for the mutants' appearance. So, despite being a remake initiated by Craven, it did end up basically becoming the duo's own movie... which was what was worrying me when I went into it. If you've been with me from the beginning, you'd know that the very first edition of Movies That Suck that I did was High Tension, which I have never liked and still think is an overrated hack-job because of the nonsensical and insulting twist ending, as well as because everything else didn't strike me as anything special. I think by the time I got to this, I had seen Piranha 3-D, which I actually do enjoy as a dumb, entertaining creature feature, but I still remember dreading seeing this because of Aja's involvement and, like I said, when I did first see it, it only reinforced my feeling that he's a hack of a director. Now, though, I can safely that, while it's still nothing special and I wish he and Levasseur had put more differences in the script, I do think Aja did a better job here than with High Tension, and he certainly did better with it than Martin Weisz did in the horrendous sequel, which I'm really not looking forward to revisiting.
Like in the original, Bobby (Dan Byrd) and Brenda (Emilie de Ravin) make up a typical bickering brother and sister pair but, in this case, even though the actors were actually in their 20's at the time, I buy them more as teenagers in regards to how they look and act, whereas Robert Houston and Susan Lanier were already in their early 30's. Once again, Brenda tends to complain about the trip and the place they're driving through, which she finds to be really crappy, and after they get stuck, there's a conversation between her and Lynn where she says, "I really don't care what they say. Next year, I am going to Cancun with my friends. Not going on any more of their lame family trips." She also teases Lynn about her job in helping Doug out with his store, which she doesn't think is much of one, and also how eager she is to help him with anything in general. Unlike her 70's counterpart, she never gets any bad vibes from the desert, other than she knows being stuck out there isn't good, with Bobby this time being the only one who realizes the trouble they're in for the first half of the movie. Like Brenda, Bobby's not too thrilled about the trip either, telling Doug that he's glad he came because he'd be bored to death otherwise, and is your average modern teenager, until he runs after Beauty and finds her gutted carcass after hearing the sound of her screaming and yelping in pain. After falling and knocking himself out when he runs away in a panic, he awakens come nightfall and, when he gets back to the trailer, decides not to tell the others because he doesn't want to scare them. He becomes paranoid at the slightest sound, heading outside the trailer with the gun his dad left him when he hears a loud clang, only to find that Beast broke his chain and ran off, and tries to find an opportunity to tell Doug what's happened, especially when Bob doesn't return when he should have. By the time he gets the gumption to tell Doug and Lynn the truth, it's too late, as Bob is killed, Pluto and Lizard ransack the trailer, Lynn and Ethel are killed, and Catherine is taken. He initially tries to go after them himself after what happens to his dad but, when he learns what happened at the trailer, he just about loses it, later getting into an angry fight and hurling insults at Doug when he tries to stop him from going after them.
I have to say that the sexual assault and rape that happens to Brenda in this film gets to me more than it did in the original, due to just how hideously ugly her attackers are, the fact that you get a better sense of the perverseness of it, and her constant muffled screams throughout it, which are about on par with Mari's spine-chilling screams and pleas when she's raped in the remake of The Last House on the Left. She's also truly and believably traumatized afterward, especially when Lizard threatens to come back for her when he fails to kill her, and is still frightened to the point of hysterics the next day. Plus, in a complete role reversal from the original, Bobby is the one who comes up with and rigs the trap that kills Jupiter, while Brenda sets one of the car's wheels on fire, hoping to create a smoke signal that will bring in help. There is a nice moment where Bobby, in his frustration and fear, yells at Brenda for her idea and hoping that someone heard them on the CB, saying that no one's going to come help them, but, after settling down and seeing that she's crying, the two of them have a loving embrace before going ahead with the plan. Most interestingly, Brenda is the one who, this time around, seems to embody the theme of civilized people pushed to commit savage acts when, after they find Jupiter mortally wounded following the explosion of the trailer, she comes rushing at him while screaming crazily and stabs him through the head with his own pickaxe. In any case, once all the mutants are vanquished, the two of them reunite with Doug, Catherine, and Beast at the sight of the trailer, with the movie ending on them still being watched from the hills.
As it was when she was played by Dee Wallace, Lynn (Vinessa Shaw) doesn't have much to her but you still get enough of a sense of her to where she's likable. She comes across as something of a peacemaker towards her family, especially when it comes to her husband, who feels that her parents hate him. Lynn often tries to get Doug to stop being so pessimistic about her parents, especially Big Bob, asking him not to stoop to his level of belittling him. As much as she hates being stuck out in the desert as everyone else, she tries to cheer Brenda up when she's complaining about how much it sucks and trying to make her see that they're approaching the point where they won't have many more family vacations to take together. The two of them have a nice sisterly banter with each other, like when Lynn playfully flips Brenda off when she mocks her rushing to get Doug's jacket and, when they mention what they miss about civilization, they laugh at their mother's horror at Brenda mentioning pot. What she has in common with Dee Wallace's portrayal is that she's a very devoted and loving wife to Doug and mother to baby Catherine, to the point where she's willing to allow Lizard to grope and have his way with her in order to keep him from killing her (she's the woman who's face is on the poster). She manages to stab him in the leg when he least expects it but she's unable to stop him and Pluto from taking Catherine, as she gets shot in the head and left to die in the trailer. What's really bad is that she doesn't die right away, as Doug finds her and tries to get her back to consciousness, only for her to finally expire in his arms. Speaking of little Catherine (Maisle Camilleri Preziosi), like Katy in the original, she's just the cutest, sweetest little thing, making it very horrific when her mother is murdered while trying to save her and she's taken with the intention of being eaten, helping you really root for Doug when he goes after her.
It's weird; Beauty and Beast's functions in the story are exactly the same as in the original (Beauty ends up as a sacrificial lamb; Beast finds her corpse and, out of revenge, kills Goggle, the mutant watchdog and Mercury equivalent here; brings his walkie-talkie to the survivors of the trailer attack; accompanies Doug on his trek to get his baby back; and kills another one of the mutants before he's through) but, for some reason, they don't come off as much like actual characters like they did before. I don't know why that is, because they have about the same amount of screentime and, on top of that, here you see the moment where Beast actually first comes across what's left of Beauty and whines mournfully, rather than having already found her and barking at her killers. Maybe it's because there's not as much focus on them barking at the hills because they can sense the danger back in there or because Beast manages to kill the mutant who slaughtered Beauty right after the trailer attack, rather than carrying with him a vendetta that he doesn't settle until near the end of the movie, but I just don't find them to be as memorable in this version (the moments where Beast helps Doug by attacking Pluto and when he kills Big Brain after he orders Lizard to kill Catherine are great ones for him, though).
I really do hate making all these comparisons to the original movie, as it's best to try to judge any movie, even it is a sequel or a remake, on its own merits but so much of this is so identical to it that it's unavoidable. When you go into a remake, you should expect some things to be similar, like the general plot, the central conflict, and, in some cases, the characters' names, but this is about 85-90% identical to the original and that's where problems set in. You could even make a checklist of not only the major scenes but also bits of dialogue and other small details that are the same. The family's first scene is them stopped at an old gas station? Check. Beauty and Beast lunge and snarl at the attendant when he goes to put in the gas? Check. Bobby goes out back to use the restroom? Check. Somebody has to fetch one of the dogs from inside the station? Check. Even further down the line, things are similar, like the decision for Big Bob and Doug to head down the opposite ends of the road (all while being watched through binoculars), Bobby making a comment about how Freud would interpret his mom's constantly talking about rattlesnakes when they're trying to have lunch, Brenda accidentally letting Beauty out of the trailer and Bobby having to chase after her, and Bobby finding her gutted corpse, running off in a panic, and falling and knocking himself out. The sequence of events during the trailer attack is almost exactly the same, with Pluto sneaking in and taking an interest in Brenda as she sleeps, him signaling for the others to blow up Bob on the Joshua tree after Bobby finally tells Doug and Lynn about Beauty, him attempting to rape Brenda while Lizard ransacks the trailer (like Mars in the original, he eats some meat, drinks some milk, and then kills one of the family's pet birds and drinks its blood), Lizard pulling him off of her and raping Brenda himself, and Lizard even says, "Baby fat and juicy," a paraphrase of Mars' line from the original. The third act is where the movie goes on its own path, as Doug, while still going after his baby with Beast, goes through a very different struggle to get her back, but things aren't much different back at the trailer, as Bobby and Brenda rig up a trap that kills Jupiter by blowing him up along with their trailer. I could go on but you get the idea. I get that doing a remake is a tricky balancing act but this one, for me, leans way too much of not changing enough from the original.
Another thing that this movie shares with the original, but in a good way, is really good location work and the various settings. While it's set in New Mexico, it was actually filmed entirely, both on location and on actual sets, in Morocco, which gives it a noticeably different look (it's much more sandy and brown than the location in the original) but, at the same time, it still carries the same palpable atmosphere that the deserts of California emitted. Like before, the location of the desert does have a kind of beauty to it but it's also an unforgivably hot and barren place, with temperatures going well past 100 degrees, according to the thermostat at Jeb's gas station, and when the Carters get stranded, the feeling of their being "fucked," as Brenda says, is overwhelming, to say the least. When you see those wide shots of the car and trailer marooned in the center of that expansive desert, they look so small in the center of it all that the idea of them literally being eaten alive by the place becomes very probable, especially since you're let on to the fact that they've fallen into a trap and are being watched by those who are waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Like Fred's Oasis in the original, Jeb's gas station is a very desolate-looking place, not completely shut down but fast approaching it, as Jeb himself yells at the mutants that he's not doing this anymore. The inside of the store, which you see when Bob makes it back there that night, looks fair enough, with food and drinks to be had inside (although the shelves are noticeably sparse), but his office and living space in the back is very primitive and cluttered, and the outhouse behind the station clearly is absolutely filthy and disgusting. Nearby, past a gnarled old fence, is an old mine tunnel that the mutants tend to lurk and hide in, a prelude to their actual home. The inside of the Carters' trailer is the closest thing that we get to a normal-looking, functioning, all-American home in the film, a nice contrast to the more unsettling dwellings that can be found out in the desert. Following the road to its end, Doug comes across an enormous bomb crater that's filled with vehicles and other discarded items like a fishing pole and a baseball bat, which he brings back to the trailer with him, but this eerie place is nothing compared to where Beast leads him as he searches for Catherine. Going through an old tunnel, which has graves of miners that are marked by pickaxes, he finds a mock-up of a small town that was used as a nuclear testing area, which has been taken over, with some of the houses turned into functional living quarters by the mutants. This facade of a rural American community, one that's full of creepy mannequins meant to represent people, as well as lots of other items that were probably taken from the victims, is unsettling enough, but add to that the idea of these crazed, hideously mutated people living there, going about mundane, everyday activities while, at the same time, killing people and storing their remains there, and it's truly nightmarish. You also see a hideous butcher shop where the remains of the mutants' victims are stored and prepared, and while it's not clear where it is, it's still somewhere in that town.
In the introduction, I talked about how one of the things I didn't care for when I first watched this was the cinematography and the movie's overall look but I think the reason why I felt that way was because, by that point, I was so tired of that digital, color-timed look in movies that any film I saw that was even remotely like that got the shaft from me. Looking at it now, with a more calmed down view on things, this movie is very well-shot. The desert is photographed in these big, wide angles that show off the expanse of the landscape and the color palette gives it an almost golden sheen to it in many shots thanks to the rising and setting sun, making it come across as beautiful as well as hot and foreboding. The town that the mutants live in is shot in such a way as to look especially searing hot and white, making it come across almost like a location you'd see in a western (these movies kind of are horror westerns, when you think about it), while the insides of the houses have a pale, kind of sickly green, washed out look to them, accentuating the horror lurking within. And it's great to finally have one of these movies be well-shot at night so where you can see what's going on. I understand that the two originals were made on low budgets and Wes Craven, at least in the first one, was probably trying to go for realism anyway, but there's that and then, there's just plain crappy photography, which this doesn't have at all. That said, I don't care for the instances of really overdone editing that you get during the more frantic sequences, like the crazy zoom-in on Big Bob getting blown up on the tree, the kinetic feel to the action during parts of the attack and fight scenes, and this dazed, slow-mo feel they put in for a moment when Doug gets stunned during his fight with Pluto, as it looks a little too music video for my tastes.
In the original Hills Have Eyes, there's a moment where, as they're driving through the desert, Brenda looks at the map and sees that there's a nuclear testing site nearby, but nothing more is ever made of it afterward and the feral family is never said to have any sort of link to it. But, when Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur were writing the screenplay for the remake, they decided to make that the very reason why the killers are the way they are. In this film, they're revealed to be a colony of miners who refused to leave their towns when the government decided to conduct nuclear tests in the desert some time between the 1940's and 60's and, instead, retreated into the mines. They were exposed to intense nuclear fallout from the blast that destroyed their homes and, over the years, the generations became more and more deformed. They eventually made the very mock-up town that was used for the tests their home and began preying on suspecting travelers who were unlucky enough to end up in the desert. However, I've never really liked this angle because, while it's certainly different from the original and serves as an interesting expansion on one little piece of that story, it's not as unsettling as the idea that this all got started because Jupiter was just a bad seed from conception, that, for whatever reason, he was born abnormally large and hairy at birth, and after murdering his sister and burning his house down, he was left out in the desert to die but, instead, he spawned a clan of deadly, wild kids all his own. Making them normal people who were mutated by a nuclear blast doesn't come off as creepy to me and, what's more, it flies in the face of the realism they were going for with the story, as atomic mutants would likely be too sick and weak from their condition to pose much of a threat to anybody. This may sound hypocritical of me to say, given how much I love those atomic monster movies of the 50's and so on, especially Godzilla, but this wasn't made in the 50's, when the exact effects of radiation were still largely unknown, and it gives it a science fiction touch that hurts the reality they're trying to create with it.
As for the mutants themselves, if you're wondering why I didn't talk about them in the character section like I did in the earlier films, there are a couple of reasons for that. One is because they're not as interesting to me as the family in the original. While I still don't find the Hill family in the original to be as creepy to watch as the Sawyers in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you still got to see them interacting with each other like a family, got a sense of their inner hierarchy, and, as a result, they had some depth to them. You don't really get that here. You hear them arguing in the mine tunnel when they're dragging Big Bob into it, Lizard being admonished over the walkie-talkie for not killing them when they can't get in touch with Goggle, and you see Big Mama and Big Brain sitting around, doing nothing, like bored people with nothing much to do in their houses, but that's about all you get. Second, they feel more like monsters than actual characters, as they barely talk (Lizard and Big Brain are the ones that talk the most) and, while they do show some intelligence in how they lay traps, talk with each over walkie-talkies, and trick Bobby into leaving the trailer so Pluto and Lizard can ransack it, they feel more like mindless, depraved brutes for the most part. And finally, there's the way they look. Aja claims that he and Levasseur based their ideas for the designs on actual research material about the effects of nuclear fallout in places like Hiroshima and Chernobyl but, even if that is the case, the mutants' looks are often so exaggerated that they feel like creatures you'd see in a comic book or in a cheesy sci-fi movie. The makeup effects by KNB look good but some of them are just so crazy that they make it hard for me to take the movie seriously.
The two most prominent mutants are Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith) and this film's equivalent to Mars, Lizard (Robert Joy), both of whom retain some of the traits of their 70's counterparts. Like there, Pluto is a big, violent manchild who also has a real devious streak in him, as he attempts to rape Brenda while Lizard ransacks the trailer, but he's much more brutish than Michael Berryman's character and not as intelligent (though he does seem to know how to drive a truck). Speaking of Lizard, he definitely has Mars' sadistic and perverted side, in how he takes delight in ransacking the trailer, drinking the one parakeet's blood, raping Brenda (he actually sniffs his fingers and yells in a feral way as he does so), fondling and stripping Lynn's clothes, killing her and Ethel, and attempting to kill Brenda in front of the others, only to run out of bullets. Like Mars, he's the one who's ordered to kill baby Catherine, a task he's obviously looking forward to, only for Ruby to betray him, and is the last one to be dealt with by Doug. I don't mind Lizard's makeup design, which is a chunk of flesh missing around his snarling mouth, showing off his nasty teeth, because it looks like something you could see on some wild, feral guy; Pluto, on the other hand, is so exaggerated in how he looks, with that pale skin, misshapen head, and missing teeth (he looks like Sloth from The Goonies), that it feels too busy when compared to Berryman, who left the mark that he did because that's simply how he looks. Goggle (Ezra Buzzington) serves the same basic role that Mercury did, acting as a watchdog who sits on a high ridge, and he also takes Pluto's early role in the original in that he keeps an eye on the family after they get stranded with binoculars. However, while Mercury was rather dopey and simple, Goggle is much more sadistic and savage in how he can be seen gnawing on one of Beauty's legs after he's butchered her and growls and laughs at Ruby as she sits down below, looking at the unconscious Bobby. Goggle doesn't last long, though, as after Pluto and Lizard leave the trailer with Catherine, Beast attacks him, tears his throat out, and brings his severed arm and walkie-talkie back to the camp. His makeup also feels similarly exaggerated, like Pluto. Jupiter (Billy Drago) really gets the short end of the stick here. Physically, he looks quite frightening and imposing (he's the only one with no over-the-top deformities), especially when he's chasing after Bobby and Brenda during the climax, and he's just as violent as the others of his clan, but he doesn't get nearly as much screentime as he did in the original and he doesn't seem to be as smart. It's clear that, again, the attack on the trailer was his idea, and he's able to trick and kill Big Bob, like in the original, but because he barely says anything and we don't actually see him acting like a violent patriarch towards the others, he's not as compelling (in fact, I wasn't even sure if he was the leader or meant to be another brother this time). Plus here, he does fall for the exploding trailer trap, knocking down his intelligence. Ruby (Laura Ortiz) also barely has anything to her here. Like before, she's clearly the one good egg in the bunch, showing innocent interest in Bobby from the start in how she sits by and watches him while he's unconscious, and she ultimately saves Catherine and gives her back to Doug when she escapes into the hills with her, but she doesn't speak and has no arc because of how little she's onscreen, so it's not as profound. She also sacrifices herself in order to save Doug and Catherine from Lizard by rushing at him and tackling him over the edge of a cliff but, again, it doesn't have much impact. Her deformities are more subtle, in that, other than some fused fingers and one eye being slightly lower than the other, she looks like little more than a malnourished little girl, making her feel more inbred and, therefore, believable.
One mutant who only appears in one scene but who is believably cringe-inducing in the way she looks is Big Mama (Ivana Turchetto). I don't know if she's Jupiter's mother or what but the sight of this heavyset, pale woman, with no hair at all, sitting in a rocking chair, brushing a doll's hair as she watches TV (she's watching Divorce Court, no less), is really unsettling to me and it's made even worse by the notion that she's the one keeping Catherine for the time being. And like the mother in the original film, she's the one bad mutant who never gets a comeuppance, as she's never seen again after she jumps Doug while he's trying to take Catherine out of her house. On the flip side, you have Big Brain (Desmond Askew), who has to be the most ridiculous of them all. The sight of him sitting in an awkward manner in his chair, his arms often in a twisted position, and his shirtless, palr, body exposed for all to see, is kind of like, "Ugh," but then, you see that big, swollen head of his that's hanging over the top of the chair and he loses all credibility. It just looks silly, again like something you'd see in a comic book, and when he makes his first appearance, he's singing the Star Spangled Banner in his wheezing voice for no reason at all. He provides some exposition when he tells Doug how the mutants came to be (though, the newspaper clippings in Jeb's office were really all the information that was necessary) before he sics Pluto on him and he's also the one who orders Lizard to kill Catherine, which made me think that he was the big patriarch of the clan, rather than Jupiter, but I cannot take him seriously with that oversized cranium. In any case, Beast kills him but it happens offscreen. I feel the same way about the mutant called Cyst, the one roaming around in the village, dragging bodies, who's played by Greg Nicotero himself. Like the others, he's over-the-top and ridiculous-looking, with that big brace around his head and shoulders, and his deformed makeup that makes me think of the latter stages of Seth Brundle's metamorphosis in The Fly, only not as effective, given the context. Even though Doug initially has to hide from him when he first enters the town, Cyst ultimately doesn't stand a chance against him, as after he kills Pluto, Doug easily massacres him with an axe. Finally, there are a couple of mutant kids whom Doug stumbles across after killing Pluto and Cyst: a girl, Venus (Judith Jane Vallette), and a boy, who's actually named Mercury (Adam Perrell). They don't threaten Doug at all, as Venus simply asks him to play with her, and their deformities are onscreen very briefly (only she gets a closeup), so they're kind of hard to pick out, but once you do see them, they're more believable-looking than some of the crazy ones you've seen up to that point.
As was the norm with most of these horror movie remakes of the 2000's, it is far gorier and grislier than the original ever thought about being. In fact, I think it's among the goriest of those remakes, much more than any of the major ones, and is matched only by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Rob Zombie's Halloween II. It opens with Pluto butchering these three scientists wearing biohazard suits who are checking for residual radiation and it doesn't let up from there at all. Among the lovely sights are Beauty's gutted body, after which you see Goggle chewing on her severed leg and Beast later finding what's left of her; Jeb blowing his head away into a bloody pulp by shooting himself point-blank with a shotgun; Bob getting his head bashed against a windshield before being carted into a mine and later blown up and burning to death; Lizard biting off the head of that parakeet before drinking its blood; Ethel getting shot through the torso and Lynn through the head, her blood splattering all over the wall and Catherine's crib behind her, as well as both of them not dying instantly; Beast ripping Goggle's throat out and bringing back his severed arm, along with the walkie-talkie; Doug getting locked in an icebox full of severed body parts and getting two of his fingers sliced off during his fight with Pluto before nailing the mutant's foot to the floor, putting a flag (which he pulled from Bob's roasted corpse) through the back of his neck, and jamming an axe in his head; Cyst getting cut up with an axe; Jupiter, who's seen munching on Ethel's corpse, getting blown up and not dying right away, with Brenda delivering the killing blow with a pickaxe; and Lizard getting beaten up before shot full of holes. It is absolutely repulsive, with the survivors being covered in blood by the end of it, especially Doug, and the makeup effects, as per usual with KNB, are very well-done, but after a while, all this extreme violence loses its meaning and just becomes mind-numbing to me.
In addition to all the practical work, the film also has a fair amount of digital effects by Jameson Goei and his crew. Their work mostly consists of adding things to the big, wide shots of the landscape, such as the huge crater full of junked cars that Doug finds (which, in a huge shot of the landscape, is revealed to be one of many such craters) and the town where the mutants live, as only one street there was physically built, with all the other sections of it being added digitally. Their work is so well-done that it's unlikely you'd even think that what you're looking are a bunch of visual effects. They also created some of mutant deformities, mainly in the case of Venus and Mercury, and also with Ruby, which is a combination of prosthetic teeth worn by Laura Ortiz along with effects to make her face look malformed. This is where the effects are kind of sketchy. While you don't get a long, lingering shot of Venus' face, when the camera is close on her face in that one shot, if you look closely, you can make out the digital work. As for Ruby, I honestly didn't know her face was augmented until I read up on it but, now when I look closely at it, I can tell, even though it is quite subtle. There are other digital effects that are a tad wonky, like the quick enhancement when Jeb blows his face off and the CG-looking fire in some scenes, like the close-ups of Bob getting burned up and when Jupiter gets blown away, but otherwise, it's pretty good work.
It's not given quite as much depth or exploration as in the original but the central theme of white-bread, civilized people being forced to resort to savagery in order to survive a horrific situation is still very much present here. Doug starts out as a geeky-looking, put-upon cellphone salesman who doesn't like to use guns, even when he's going to be walking out into a vast wilderness like the New Mexico desert (Big Bob, at one point, jokes that, as a Democrat, he doesn't "believe in guns,"), but after his wife and mother-in-law are brutally murdered and his baby daughter kidnapped, he's pushed to his limits and becomes someone you don't want to cross. While he gets beaten up badly by Pluto during their fight and, at one point, appears to be begging for his life, Doug manages to turn the tables and gut the mutant like a pig, doing the same to Cyst outside, before chasing after Catherine as Ruby carries her through the hills and ultimately beating and pumping Lizard full of lead with a shotgun. The same thing happens with Bobby and Brenda, with Bobby going from a normal teenager who likes bugging his sister to being gun-toting and paranoid at the slightest sound. What's more, not only do they set a deadly trap at the trailer for Jupiter but, after he's revealed to have been badly burned by the explosion but is still alive, Brenda, who was another normal teenager and then became traumatized and frightened after having been raped by Lizard, comes running in with a pick-axe and uses it to finish Jupiter off by stabbing him through the head. Once they've all reunited, they're bloody and emotionally spent, but they've survived. The only part that's missing is the moment where one of them realizes that they've become as savage as the killers, like the expression on Doug's face at the very end of the original after he's stabbed Mars to death. You could say that, by the end of this movie, you don't need that to comprehend that they're not the people they once were and, eventually, they may realize it themselves, but it still would have been nice to have that moment.
The movie opens with a caption stating that the United States conducted 331 nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962 (no, they didn't) and that the government continues to deny the effects caused by the fallout. It then transitions to the dusty, wind-blown New Mexico desert, the camera panning down a shallow stream as a man in a biohazard suit fishes out a couple of them in a small net. While he and his partner examine their find, another scientist is roaming around, checking the radiation levels with a Geiger counter, which start spiking when he reaches some large rocks further down the stream. As he looks around, a man covered in blood comes running up to him, begging him for help, causing him to back away in shock, when a pick-axe gets him in the back of the head. He's dropped on the ground by his fallen counter, as one of his partners gets the axe through his back and out his front, the killer flinging him up into the air with it and bringing him back down. The remaining scientist runs for it, as his partner is continuously slammed against the rocks, the killer apparently trying to wrench his axe free, and he tries to climb over some rocks, only to be impaled from behind and dragged back down. The dead men, including the one who ran to the one scientist for help, are dragged away by their own truck, which they're chained to on the bottom of the tailgate. This leads into the opening credits sequence, which is interesting, to say the least, as it starts with an old 50's film clip of a woman taking a birthday cake, putting it on a counter, and blowing out the candles. A narrator then says, "Time for the show. Everybody on stage," as she does so and it transitions into a montage of old, nuclear test footage, interspersed with shots of disturbing genetic defects on kids and babies (they're said to be actual photos of children affected by Agent Orange), all while the country song, More and More, plays. Most significantly, you see the construction of a testing village like the one the mutants are revealed to be occupying.
Following that, the actual story begins on the reveal of Jeb's rather rundown and desolate-looking gas station, where the temperature is already topping over 100 degrees. Inside his living quarters in the back of the store, Jeb is lying in bed when he hears something outside and gets up. Grabbing his shotgun, he walks outside and notices that his water pump is creaking back and forth, with the spout leaking water. He yells for Ruby, asking, and obviously hoping, if it's her, and then walks out into the desert, still yelling for her. Reaching a wash behind a ridge with a gnarled fence along it, one with a sign that says, NO TRESPASSING. UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, he walks up to the entrance of an old mine tunnel and, looking around warily, again yells for Ruby. Getting no response, he then says, "Is that you, Jupiter?! I got some buckshots for you, you hear me?!" Heading back to his station, he finds a holdall lying outside the door to his quarters and he yells into the hills, "I told you, it's over! I'm out, you hear me?! You're on your own now!" He laments to himself that he can't do it anymore and walks back inside. As someone watches from nearby, he brings the holdall in with him and, going through it, finds an old video camera, some jewelry, and, after feeling someone moving around outside, pulls out a styrofoam box that he opens to find a severed ear inside. Taking a wallet that's in there, he looks through it and removes a photo of a nice-looking, happy young couple. He then hears a car horn honking outside and somebody yelling, "Hello," prompting him to put it all back in the bag. Outside, Big Bob Carter is leaning on the horn, as Ethel gets out to stretch her legs and Bobby wakes up Brenda, both of whom are in the back of the car. Jeb then comes out and does what Bob asks, which is fill the tank up, check the fluids, etc. Inside the trailer, Doug Bukowski is struggling to fix the air conditioning and complaining to his wife, Lynn, about why they couldn't have just flown and how he feels her parents hate him, while outside, Jeb learns that the family is on their way to San Diego.
Out back, Brenda is playing with a little piglet that Jeb has back there, while Bobby goes to use the restroom (he was going to pee behind a bush but Brenda forced him to use the outhouse that's right next to it). Back at the car and trailer, someone reaches into the former's backseat and takes a red sweater, while Doug walks outside and realizes then that there's no cellphone signal to be found. In the outhouse, Bobby, as he does his business, is really regretting listening to Brenda, as it's unbelievably filthy, when he jumps back upon seeing someone watching him through the slats in the wood. Thinking it was Brenda, Bobby, who peed on his pants, calls Brenda a perv as he walks by her, while at the car, Jeb tells them that they have a long drive to the nearest highway that will lead them to California; he then learns that Bob is an ex-cop. The dog Beauty manages to slip out of the trailer and paw her way through the store's door, while Bob pays Jeb for the service. Lynn heads inside to find Beauty and, hearing some rattling in the back room, walks back there to see Beauty looking out the window and barking. Glancing at how rundown this room is, as well as the holdall on the table, Lynn grabs Beauty's collar and tries to pull her out, only to run into Jeb, who asks her if she needs anything. Lynn explains that she just went to fetch the dog and pulls her past him, out of the room; when she's out, Jeb glances at the bag with a worried expression on his face. Outside, Bob impatiently waits for everyone to get settled back in so they can leave, when Jeb walks up to his window and tells him about an unmarked shortcut that will lead them through the hills and save them a couple of hours. Bob and Ethel thank him for the information and then head on down the road, as Jeb walks back to his station, a conflicted look on his face, as he knows he just sent them to their doom.
Despite Brenda's complaining, the family travels into the heart of the desert, which Bob describes as gorgeous, and in the trailer, Doug and Bobby manage to fix the A/C. However, as they drive along, with Ethel trying to find where they are on the map, a spike strip suddenly springs up in front of their car. The tires immediately burst when they drive over them, sending the car swerving down the road and throwing Doug and Bobby and everything else off-balance in the trailer. Bob tries to get control of the car, which is swerving crazily, until it veers straight towards a large rock on the side of the road. He hits the brake but isn't quick enough, as it smashes straight into it, rears up, and finally comes back down to rest; back down the road, the strip is removed by someone who actually growls as he does so. Everyone immediately disembarks to make sure they're all okay, with the two dogs running out of the trailer and off into the desert, and they then try to figure out what happened, with Lynn suggesting that the heat may have caused the tires to blowout. Seeing how the car's hood is damaged and the engine is steaming, Bob slams his fists down on it in frustration, while Bobby runs off into the desert to get the dogs, as they run towards some rocky hills, and Brenda, looking around at their desolate surroundings, says to herself, "We're so fucked." Doug, meanwhile, finds that there's definitely no cellphone signal to be found out there either, telling Lynn, "97% nationwide coverage and we find ourselves in that 3%." Walking back to the vehicles, where Bob is arguing with Ethel, Doug asks him what the damage is and he says that the axle's broken and the frame on the front is twisted. They then realize that there's no cellphone signal and they're unlikely to get through to anybody on the CB since the freeway is on the other side of the hills. Bob then tells Doug that the two of them are going to have to walk, and when Doug mentions that they're miles from anywhere, it sparks an argument between them, as Bob, irritated and sarcastic, says that they could wait for somebody to drive by. Lynn takes Doug away before it can escalate. In the desert, Bobby has found the dogs and are taking them back, telling them that there's nothing out there, unaware that he's being watched.
At the trailer, Brenda has taken the opportunity to get a tan, lying out on a deck chair and putting on sunscreen, while Bob gives Bobby a gun for protection, arming himself with an enormous revolver. Ethel isn't too thrilled about him pulling out the guns but Bob reminds her that he's a professional, adding that he prefers bullets to nothing but her prayers to keep him safe. Pointing his gun and pretending to shoot, Bobby teases Doug by aiming at him, while Bob tells his son that Doug doesn't believe in guns. Bobby just teases him more, telling him to try shooting just once, but Doug says that he'd probably just shoot his foot off. Following a short talk between her and Brenda, Lynn goes into the trailer to grab Doug's jacket upon his request and, looking out the window, she sees something reflect the light in the hills. She moves to another window, trying to get a better look at it, when Bobby suddenly bangs on the window from outside and scares her. Yelling at him, and angrily denying him asking her to get him a Twinky, Lynn takes another look through the window's slats and sees that whatever it was is not there anymore. She walks back outside to where Doug and Bob decide where each of them is going, with Doug refusing to take a gun with him; Lynn, however, doesn't take no for an answer when it comes to forcing him to wear a dopey sunhat. Telling Ethel that he's going to head back to the gas station, Bob then tells Brenda that he's leaving Bobby in charge. Ethel then says that they think they should all say a prayer, much to Brenda's irritation, but when Bob insists, she gets up, puts on her shirt, and joins the others, as they all embrace in a circle. Ethel says a short prayer and once she's done, Bob and Doug set on their separate paths, all while they're being watched from the hills by a growling man using binoculars.
Some time later, Lynn takes Catherine out of her crib and carries her outside, where Ethel has a picnic table set up for lunch. She joins Ethel and Brenda out there, with Bobby joining them shortly, having now realized that his red sweater is missing. They also note that the dogs are barking repeatedly inside the trailer, although Ethel writes it off as them sensing rattlesnakes nearby. After Bobby makes a crude joke about his mother's obsession with snakes, Brenda gets up and opens the trailer door to go inside, only for Beauty to suddenly bolt out and run into the hills. Frustrated, Bobby gets up and runs after her, with Ethel yelling for him to come back and Brenda chasing after him, all while Lynn, breastfeeding Catherine, just smirks at the chaos. Bobby chases Beauty down a dirt path beyond a hill, as she heads up into the really rocky ridges up ahead. Daunted at the sight of them when he reaches them, Bobby has no choice but to climb up after her, hearing her barking. He yells for her and then continues on, walking into a more level area beyond, when he hears Beauty let out a series of pained shrieks. Following the dirt path that he's found, Bobby, upon hearing someone run past him from behind, picks up a large rock for protection and creeps back along the corner of the rock he walked past, only to find no one back there. Unaware that he's now being watched from atop a nearby ridge, and that the person is wearing his read sweater, Bobby begins following the path again, finding a blood trail that leads him straight to Beauty's gutted corpse. Crying in horror upon seeing this, he throws the rock to the ground, yelling, "Fuck!", and then makes the mistake of inspecting the corpse further, pulling her leg up to reveal her slit open middle. This thoroughly frightens him and sends him running away in a panic, to the point where, when he reaches a drop-off, he quickly loses his balance while making his way down and falls, hitting the ground on his back and knocking himself unconscious. As he lies there, little Ruby walks over to him and satisfies her curiosity by inspecting him, smiling as she clearly likes him. Blood then drips on his face from above and Ruby looks up to see Goggle sitting on the ridge behind her, munching on one of Beauty's severed legs. He actually tries so hard to pull off some flesh that he falls backwards a bit and, after grunting at Ruby viciously, lets out an insane cackle before continuing his meal.
Doug, meanwhile, is still walking the blistering hot road to see where it leads, singing to himself to keep from losing his mind, when it dead-ends at a ridge overlooking an enormous crater, one that appears to be a dumping ground for abandoned, wrecked vehicles. Making his way down there, he finds that the place is full of every type of vehicle imaginable, from various cars and trucks to trailers and even a go-cart and a school bus here and there. Walking up to one wrecked old car that has its trunk blown open, and not seeing the blood on the outside of the driver's door, Doug opens one of the back doors to see what he can find. Picking up a dirty teddy bear, he takes it with him, obviously deciding to give it to Catherine when he gets back. He then continues looking at all of the various vehicles, getting startled when a crow suddenly flies up from inside one, as the camera cuts back a couple of times to show that the crater is one of many dotting the landscape. The camera then cuts and pans around the landscape, across some tracks on a blackened patch of earth that leads to a mine tunnel, the camera suddenly shooting in there at a kinetic speed.
By nightfall, Bob has made it back to the gas station. Getting no response when he yells for Jeb a couple of times outside, he heads on in looking for him, as the song, In the Valley of the Sun, plays inside the store. Unaware that some certain individuals are gathering outside, he takes a bottle of water from the cooler and, leaving some money for it on the counter, he again yells for Jeb, telling him about the wreck. Still getting no response, he attempts to use the phone that he sees on the wall (earlier, Jeb had said he didn't have one), only to find that it doesn't work. Knocking on the wall and continuing to call for Jeb, Bob walks into the back part of the store. Finding his way into his living space, he looks through the stuff in the holdall on the table, switching the safety of his gun off when he finds the severed ear. He heads on into the office further in the back, switching on the table lamp on the desk and looking through the drawer to find anything. Noticing some clippings on the wall, he illuminates them with the lamp, seeing that they're a series of cut-out newspaper articles about nuclear testing, miners refusing to leave their home, suspected to be hiding in the mines themselves, and the military razing their town. There are also numerous pictures of deformed babies, kids, and even some adults. When he sees some other articles about families disappearing in the desert, Bob growls, "You son of a bitch," knowing that Jeb deliberately led them out there, and heads out the backdoor, pointing his gun. He goes for Jeb's car and, finding the keys, attempts to start it up, causing the headlights to come on. They illuminate the outhouse and Bob, hearing Jeb yelling drunkenly, sees his feet sticking out of the little bathroom. Getting out and approaching the outhouse with his gun drawn, Bob tells Jeb to open the door but Jeb is so drunk that he ignores him, moaning about kids growing up in the mines like animals. Bob uses the tip of his foot to open the door and finds Jeb sitting in there, a shotgun in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other. He tells Jeb to put the gun down but Jeb, instead, sets down the bottle before moaning, "I did the best I could. I'm sorry." Before Bob can stop him, he then cocks his shotgun and shoots himself under his chin, blowing his entire face off and putting a hole through the top of the outhouse.
Bob barely has time to process this when he hears somebody growl, "Daddy," at him from the darkness. Looking from side to side, he swings around and fires a couple of shots. Still hearing the voice, he backs up swiftly, firing some more shots, and bumping into a bush in his way. Continuously hearing the voice, Bob heads back to Jeb's car and climbs into the driver's seat. Closing the door, he's about to start it up, when he hears, "Daddy," behind him and looks in back mirror to see Jupiter's evil eyes staring at him from the backseat. Bob tries to go for his gun but he gets grabbed from behind and his head is slammed repeatedly into the windshield and the window, covering the latter in blood. Bob is then shown being placed on an old-fashioned, wooden roller and dragged into the mine tunnel. He sees glimpses of the place and hears some voices arguing, with the last thing he sees before he blacks out being a blurred glimpse at one of his captors. Back at the trailer, Beast is chained up and barking repeatedly, while Lynn yells for Brenda, who's out looking for Bobby. Bobby is still unconscious, with Ruby sitting next to him, keeping an eye on him and humming to herself. She then hears Brenda calling for Bobby and runs off, as Bobby finally comes to. Once he's back at the trailer, Ethel puts some antiseptic on the cut he got from his fall, while he asks if they tried the CB. Lynn talks about them hearing what sounded like breathing over it but Ethel dismisses it as just static. Hearing a sudden noise and the sound of Beast barking, Bobby suddenly rears up and rushes outside with his gun drawn, telling the others to stay inside. Wondering what's wrong with him, they watch through the windows as he creeps around the side of the trailer, completely freaked out and ready to shoot anything that moves. Reaching the end of the trailer, he finds that Beast broke his chain and ran off into the hills (something that Wes Craven didn't show in his original film), much to Bobby's chagrin. He yells for Beast and nearly jumps out of his skin when Doug comes up behind him and touches him on the shoulder. He actually points the gun at him and Doug has to quickly yell that it's him to get him to put it down. Once he's stopped aiming at him, Doug tells him about the place he found and knocks on the door, letting the women know that he's back. Showing them the stuff he found at the crater, such as a brand new fishing pole and baseball bat, he tells them about the crater and that the road ends there, prompting Brenda to say, "I knew that old man was full of shit." They all then head inside, while out in the hills, Beast whines mournfully when he finds Beauty's slaughtered corpse.
Bobby shuts the trailer's door and locks it, only to learn that Doug and Lynn are planning to sleep outside in the car. He tries to convince them to sleep in the trailer but Doug doesn't think six people sleeping in a trailer meant for three would be comfortable. As Doug steps outside, Bobby stops him and tries to tell him what's happened but he's unable to get the words out and Doug simply thinks he's worried about his dad, assuring him that some snakes and scorpions wouldn't be able to stop Big Bob. Lynn then walks by Bobby to join her husband but, before they walk to the car, Doug tells Bobby that they'll go looking for his dad if he isn't back by midnight. With that, Bobby closes the door and Doug and Lynn climb into the SUV. Inside the trailer, Brenda kisses Catherine goodnight and turns on her mobile, which plays Brahms' Lullaby, before climbing into her own bed and turning out the light. Time pass and Bobby is sitting in a chair next to the couch, where his mother is sleeping, and repeatedly turns a flashlight on and off out of anxiousness. Looking at his watch and seeing that it's 11:49, he then hears what sounds like Beast barking outside. Taking his gun, he walks outside to investigate, calling for Beast. Turning on his flashlight, he walks beyond the light of the still burning campfire, following the sound of the barking. Inside the trailer, Brenda, who's fallen asleep while listening to music, doesn't heart Bobby outside or sense her light being turned on. A gnarly-looking hand reaches out to her and brushes her hair, unbeknownst to Ethel, who's still asleep on the couch. Outside, Bobby follows the sounds of the barking to a bush, while inside, the hideous mutant Pluto pulls back the open sleeping bag Brenda is using as a cover, smiling and panting creepily at the sight of the girl's lovely young body. Approaching the bush upon hearing some rustling going on within it, Bobby is frightened when the barks turn into growls that are clearly being made by a person, who proceeds to laugh at him, prompting him to run back to the trailer; inside, Pluto unintentionally wakes Brenda up and quickly plants his hand over her mouth before she can scream. Panicking, Bobby runs to the SUV and wakes Doug and Lynn up by tapping on the window. When they roll it down, he tells them that he believes there are people living in the hills and, when he can tell they're immediately disbelieving him, he comes out and tells them that Beauty's dead. Explaining that she looked like somebody cut her open and that he didn't want to scare anyone, as well as adding that Bob isn't back yet, Doug takes him seriously and gets out of the car, saying they'll check it out. Bobby tells Lynn, "We're not alone," while Doug tells her to lock the car.
Hearing them, and still struggling with Brenda, Pluto pulls out his walkie-talkie and yells, "Now!" into it. Instantly, there's an explosion nearby and they all look to see a tree burst in flames, with Bob tied to it and screaming in agony as he's slowly burned alive. Bobby immediately rushes to the site, while Doug tries to keep Ethel back, telling her they're not sure what's going on, but is unable to restrain her. When Lynn rushes past him as well, screaming for her dad, Doug runs inside the trailer, grabs a fire extinguisher, and tells Brenda to watch the baby, unaware of how she's being assaulted back there. Once Doug's out of the trailer, Lizard jumps down from atop it and steps inside, closing the door behind him. As Catherine cries, and as Pluto continues having his way with Brenda, Lizard grabs an apron he finds in the kitchen and puts it on, along with the hat Doug was wearing earlier. The others reach Bob and are horrified to see him completely engulfed in flames, while Lizard munches on some meat from the refrigerator, downs some milk from a carton, and then spies the birdcage with the parakeets inside it. While Doug douses the roasted Bob with a fire extinguisher, Lizard grabs one of the parakeets, pulls it out of the cage, ignoring its biting his hand, and proceeds to bite its head off and pours its blood down his throat, getting it all over his mouth as well. At the site of the pyre, Ethel is so hysterical that she has to be restrained by Lynn, while Doug keeps dousing Bob, trying to put the fire out, while Bobby is crying his eyes out. Back at the trailer, Lizard sees what Pluto is doing and hears Brenda's muffled screams. He rushes at him, pulls him off, and throws him to the floor, telling him, "You gotta be a man to do that." When Pluto protests, Lizard takes out his gun and hits him in the head with the butt of it, before delivering another hit to the back and kicking him in his underside, yelling for him to move, as he puts the gun to his cheek. Whimpering, Pluto stumbles into the kitchen and, as Lizard laughs at him, throws a tantrum, smashing everything he sees, like the cabinets, the kitchenware, and the birdcage, killing the remaining parakeet. At the same time, Lizard goes after Brenda, who tries to fight him off, but it only gets him more excited, as he takes her pillow away and smacks her with it, before grabbing her and pulling her into position, and squeezing her thighs, before whacking her across the face, making her stop screaming. He unzips his pants, pulls Brenda's pants down, and proceeds to rape her, as she reaches for the window and screams hysterically, while Lizard sniffs his fingers and lets out an animalistic, "Whoo!" (This is the part of the movie that disturbs me a lot more than the original.) Pluto, meanwhile, looks down on Catherine as she cries in her crib and, seeing him, she reaches out and touches his face as he laughs.
By this point, Ethel is hysterically yelling, "It's not my Bob!", while Lynn pulls her away and tries to take her back to the trailer. When they approach the trailer, Lynn hears Brenda screaming and Catherine crying. She tells her mother to stay there and rushes to the trailer, running through the door to find Lizard holding Catherine and Pluto with his arms around Brenda in the back. Looking at Lynn and smiling, Lizard points at Catherine, saying, "Baby fat and juicy." Lynn grabs a nearby frying pan and whacks him in the head with it, sending him to the floor. She tries to get him again but he grabs her arm and wrenches it, making her drop the pan, quickly pulling his gun out (which is actually the gun they took off of Bob) and pointing it at Catherine on the floor. Cocking it and threatening to kill her, Lynn stops fighting with him, telling him, "No, please!", and then, Lizard takes advantage of the situation, reaching out and caressing her face. Outside, Doug finally manages to put the fire out but, by this point, Bob is far past dead. Enraged, Bobby pulls out his gun and stomps off into the dark, telling Doug, "Fucking kill those motherfuckers!" He tries to call him back, telling him not to do something stupid, while Ethel hears the commotion going on in the trailer. Lizard has Lynn's head in his hands and is licking the side of her face, with Pluto doing the same to Brenda in the back, and he then proceeds to rip her gown open, exposing her bra. As Lizard pulls one of the straps down and proceeds to sniff her cleavage, Ethel grabs a large rock outside and heads to the trailer, while Doug gets Bob's charred body off the tree. Lizard is still pointing his gun at Catherine as he licks Lynn's breasts, when Ethel walks in behind her with the rock. Lizard is too busy to notice her and, as she raises the rock above her head, Pluto lets out a yell that alerts him. He immediately raises up and shoots her in the chest, the force of the shot sending her flying backwards onto the couch; outside, both Doug and Bobby hear the shot. As Brenda screams in horror at this, Lynn quickly grabs an ice-pick on the floor nearby and, while the men run for the trailer, stabs Lizard in the leg just before he can shoot Brenda as well. Lizard yells in pain, with Lynn adding to it by wrenching the pick back and forth in his leg, but he manages to lower the gun and, right as she looks up, shoots her through the head. Brenda's scream at this blends in with the soundtrack, mixing with a screeching, shrill piece of music, as Lynn's blood has splattered all over the crib, the mobile, and the wall behind it.
Carrying Catherine, Pluto jumps out of the trailer and runs off into the dark, while Lizard forces Brenda outside as well. Seeing Doug and Bobby coming, he points the gun at Brenda, who grabs the barrel and tries to force it away. He pulls the trigger, only for the chamber to click empty, and, after yelling, "Shit!" in frustration, he tells her, "I'll come back for ya," before running off after Pluto, limping and yelling, "Bitch stuck me like a pig!" Reaching the spot, Bobby fires some shots at the two of them but misses them both, and then runs back and tries to comfort Brenda, who's hysterical and whimpering; out in the dark, Bob's body is dragged away. Doug walks into the trailer to find Ethel slumped on the couch, alive but barely, her front covered in blood, and then turns and gasps to see Lynn lying on the floor, a pool of blood behind her head. He slowly reaches out and touches her head, which causes her to take a gasp. He frantically tries to help her, telling her not to move, as she gurgles and gags, but then, she lets out one last gasp and stops breathing. Doug tries to rouse her again by yelling her name but he realizes that she's gone and leans down over heard, sobbing. He then rushes to Catherine's crib and, seeing it empty, realizes she's been taken. He slumps down to the floor and backs up against the cabinets, quietly crying in shock. Out in the hills, Goggle uses his binoculars to keep an eye on the trailer from his perch, when he turns his head upon hearing some rustling behind him. Not seeing anything, he's about to turn back around, when Beast comes barking at him and goes right for his jugular, forcing him down and ripping his throat wide open as he struggles with him.
At the trailer, Brenda is in shock, Bobby is pacing back and forth, asking what they're going to do if they come back, while Doug simply tries to keep Ethel comfortable in her final moments, as she mutters about not being able to keep the trailer clean. She asks if Big Bob is back yet and then asks if everyone's gone to bed, following that up with the heart-wrenching question, "Is Lynny sleeping?" Doug simply nods in response and gets Ethel a blanket when she asks for it, shivering and saying that it's cold; Bobby puts another blanket over Lynn's body on the floor. Ethel says, "You're so sweet, Doug. I understand why Lynny loves you so much," and then expires, causing Brenda to sob into her blanket. Grief-stricken and angry, Bobby again cocks his gun and is about to head out but Doug stops him, having to slam him against the wall, yelling, "Look what they did to your mother! Look what they did to your sister! Huh? You stop and think. You're not a fucking child anymore. You won't make it three feet out there. We need a plan. We need to think." Bobby, however, is in no mood to think, as he screams about how they have Catherine and he's not going to do anything, saying he's a pussy. Doug slams him against the wall and screams at him to shut up, to which Bobby quietly responds, "Fuck you." They then hear what sounds like someone yelling for Goggle outside and Doug quickly turns the light off, which freaks Brenda out, as she remembers Lizard's threat to come back for her. Doug tells Brenda to be quiet, as she cowers in the corner, and they hear the crackling of static over a walkie-talkie outside, making her even more frantic. Bobby raises his gun and, hearing the voice again yell for Goggle, he fires three shots through the door. Not hearing anything afterward, Doug quietly creeps over to the door and looks through the bullet-holes. Seeing nothing outside, he slowly slips through the door, continuing to hear the voice yelling for Goggle, while Bobby stands in the doorway. Doug comes up Goggle's severed arm, his hand gripping the walkie-talkie, and he hears Jupiter angrily yell at Lizard when he learns they didn't kill them all like he told them to. Seeing some movement underneath the trailer when he looks back, Doug motions for Bobby to fire and he shoots through the floor twice. That's when Beast comes running from behind the trailer and up to Doug, who happily hugs him and calls him a good boy, with Bobby joining them. Over the walkie-talkie, they hear someone say that Jupiter's going to finish them off. Doug then angrily yells at them over it, asking them why they're doing this and demanding they give Catherine back to him. After saying this a second time, he hears Catherine crying over it, as if they're saying, "Come and get her," and drops it in shock. He then asks Bobby how many bullets he has left, to which he answers, "A clip and a half."
The next morning, Doug, armed with a baseball bat and the walkie-talkie, heads out with Beast, who follows the trail of blood left behind by Lizard's bleeding leg into the hills, across the rocks, and down a slope into a small valley, which eventually leads them to another mining tunnel. With a large door to the entrance ajar, they creep in and head down into the dark, Doug brandishing the bat, ready for anything. Beast, still following the very fresh splotches of blood on the ground, leads Doug into the heart of the tunnel, and at one point, he swiftly turns and shines his light upon hearing something. Not seeing anything, they move on, coming across a small graveyard in the tunnel, the graves marked by pickaxes hammered into the dirt and old pictures of the deceased hanging from the picks. Beast begins whimpering and he anxiously leads Doug on, into a passage that heads out into daylight. Emerging from it, and with Ruby watching from nearby, Doug and Beast walk out onto a ledge that overlooks what appears to be a small, desert town. Doug then takes out the walkie-talkie and attempts to contact Bobby. However, neither he nor Brenda are inside the trailer to hear it. Outside, Brenda rolls one of the SUV's tires to a spot, douses it with lighter fluid, and sets it on fire, a gust of wind causing the flames and the smoke to billow wildly. At the same time, Bobby, having heard the one mutant mention that Jupiter is coming for them, is rigging up a sort of warning, running a fishing line across the desert floor, tying it in place around some small sticks he's planted in a row in the ground. Brenda mentions that someone might have heard their calls over the CB but Bobby, in his frantic state, yells that nobody heard them, nor are they going to see the smoke from that fire. He then hits his finger while hammering in one stick and yells in pain and frustration, when he sees that Brenda is sobbing. He walks over to her and, apologizing for yelling, embraces her, as she says that she's scared, asking, "Who are these people?"
Entering the town, Doug and Beast walk through the middle of the center street, Doug not sure what to make of all the houses and vehicles there that appear to be abandoned. Walking behind one house, they come across a bunch of scorched mannequins, both on the outside patio and inside, revealing it to have been a nuclear testing site. The two of them walk into one house that actually has some mannequins meant to represent kids watching TV on the floor in the living room and the film cuts to a sign elsewhere that identifies the place as Testing Village 3-B. Walking out of the house, Doug sees the eerie visage of charred, child-like mannequins sitting on a creaking swing-set nearby, when he and Beast come across one home that has a running generator next to it. Doug walks up to the dust-covered window next to it and wipes a clear spot. Looking in, he sees Catherine lying on a bed inside. He promptly tries to head inside but has to quickly duck against the wall when the mutant Cyst walks by, dragging a body across the ground. He ducks down behind Beast, who whimpers rather loudly, prompting Cyst to swing around. Though he doesn't see anything, he drops the body and, wielding a shotgun, heads over to investigate, but upon still not finding anything, he goes back to what he was doing, unaware that Doug and Beast are hiding inside an old, beat up car parked across from the generator. Once Cyst drags the body off, Doug gets out of the car but, realizing that Beast may give him away again, leaves him in there, telling him to stay. Beast watches anxiously as Doug heads around to the front door of the house and, finding it unlocked, creeps inside. Shutting the door behind him, he slowly walks along the creaking, wooden floor towards the bedroom, hearing some chattering in another room nearby. Reaching the bedroom, he looks into the adjoining room and spots someone with their back to him, sitting in a rocking chair. Said person, Big Mama, is watching television and is brushing the hair of a doll in her lap. She doesn't seem to notice Doug and so, he walks over to the bed, picks Catherine up in his arms, and slowly and quietly begins heading for the front door. He almost makes it but, when he enters the hall leading to the door, Big Mama suddenly comes running at him and hits him over the head with something, as we're then bombarded with creepy images of the place's deep interior, including what appears to be glances of where the mutants butcher their victims. Back at the trailer, Bobby finishes rigging up the line and attaching it to the fishing pole, is attached to the side of the SUV, with one of Catherine's toys tied to the top of it. He and Brenda then perform the morbid task of placing Lynn and Ethel's bodies into the backseat of the SUV, the two of them horribly upset at having to do this.
Doug then wakes up in a dark confined space, his head hurting and blood all over him. He bangs his head on something above him when he tries to get out and, seeing it's a plastic lid of some kind, he wipes a clear spot to try to make out where he is. An exterior shot then reveals him to be in an ice-box, his bat and flashlight lying on top of it. Taking out a match and lighting it, Doug yells and recoils in horror to find himself amongst a bunch of dead bodies and severed limbs. He frantically bangs on the box's walls and then on the lid. At first, he merely bounces his items up into the air but, after continues hitting, he manages to knock the lock loose and is able to throw open the lid and climb out, coughing and gagging from the smell and the hideousness of it all. Outside, Beast manages to get out of the car by slipping through a large gap he finds hidden in the floorboard. Meanwhile, Doug, armed again with his bat, begins creeping through the place and realizes that he's in a different house than he was before. He makes his way into a dining room with a bunch of mannequins sitting around the table, along with Bob's charred corpse, which has a small, American flag sticking out of the head. Gagging again at the sight of this, Doug then hears a man singing the national anthem in a raspy, wheezing voice. Following the sound through more rooms filled with mannequins, he comes across Big Brain as he sits in his wheelchair in what serves as the living room. He doesn't finish the song before Doug walks up to him, pointing the bat at him, and demands to know where Catherine is. Big Brain says, "I don't know where she is. I never leave this place." As Doug searches the nearby room and closet, Big Brain tells him how he and the other mutants became what they are, saying, "Your people asked our families to leave the towns, and you destroyed our homes. We went into the mines, you set off your bombs, and turned everything to ashes. You made us what we've become. Boom. Boom. Boom!" Enraged, Doug threatens to bash the bat over his head and again demands he tell him where Catherine is. Big Brain laughs at him and when Doug asks what's so funny, he says, "It's breakfast time."
With that, Pluto explodes through the double-doors in front of them, wielding an axe. He swings at Doug, who falls to the floor and just manages to dodge the blade, causing him to take out an old television on a stand next to him. Doug gets up and flings an object at Pluto before running to the opposite side of the room, dodging another swing from the axe before running into the adjoining hallway. He runs for the door but Pluto cuts him off and he tries to run up the flight of stairs behind him, only for Pluto to grab his leg and pull him back down, despite his attempts to brace himself on the stairwell. Getting him down to the floor, Pluto brings his axe down but Doug rolls out of the way, and before the mutant can swing again, Beast comes charging in from the other hallway and grabs onto his arm. As Pluto struggles to shake Beast off, Doug runs back into the one room, grabs the bat that he dropped, and takes refuge in a bathroom, closing the door behind him and pushing and dragging the bathtub up against it. Pluto starts hitting Beast in the head with his fist and finally manages to fling him off, into the next room. With his bat, Doug stands in front of the door, waiting to bash Pluto the minute he comes through, but things suddenly get eerily quiet and he approaches the door to see if he can hear him. Pluto then comes crashing through the weak wall to Doug's right, grabbing him by the throat, making him drop the bat, lifting him up, and, looking him in the eye and chuckling like an oversized child, flings him to the floor. Grabbing his axe, he again tries to slash Doug but misses, as Doug gets up and runs behind the shower curtain, using it throw off Pluto's aim as he swings, smashing a window in the process. Doug dodges his crazed swinging and falls and slides across the floor to the other side of the room. He goes for the bat but Pluto comes down with the axe, cutting it in half, prompting Doug to use its splintered point and stab him deep in the gut with it. Pluto stops what he's doing and looks down at the bat, before looking at Doug and slowly pulling it out, much to his horror. Showing him the point, Pluto comes around and whacks Doug down to the ground with a blow to the head. Pluto throws the broken bat to the floor as the dazed Doug gets up, everything around him blurry and moving slowly due to the blow he just took. Taking the opportunity, Pluto rushes at him and smashes him through the wall behind him, before grabbing his leg and flinging him through a window, into the next room, which is the dining room.
Stomping in there after him, Pluto reaches him as he lies there on the floor, stunned, and comes down with his axe, chopping off two of Doug's fingers on his left hand. Pulling his hand away and yelling in pain, Doug scooches underneath the table but Pluto chops into it, swinging and slicing off the head of one of the mannequins around it, chops into it again, smashes a chair that his axe gets caught on, and takes another chop to the table. Looking under it and seeing Doug, he smashes his axe into the center of the table, breaking through it completely, leaving Doug with nowhere to hide. As Big Brain watches from the next room, Pluto flips what's left of the table over and is about to come down with his axe, when Doug, standing on his knees, takes out an ice-pick that he found and dazedly points it at him. Pluto lowers his axe and can only laugh at the pathetic weapon, before lifting his axe and putting its blade up against Doug's face. Doug then drops his arm to the floor and begins to sob, as Pluto gently trails the axe blade over the side of his head and through his hair. He begs Pluto not to kill him, with Big Brain mocking him in the next room, and Pluto turning his head to smile at him. With his head turned, Doug takes his chance and puts the pick right through Pluto's foot, nailing it to the floor. Pluto yells in pain and leans over, trying to pull the pick out, when Doug runs over to Bob's corpse, removes the flag from his head, and stabs Pluto through the back of his neck and out his throat with the sharp end of the pole. Pluto wrenches up and shoves Doug off of him, gagging, before Doug finishes him grabbing the axe and putting the blade right into his head. Ripping it out, he watches as Pluto falls to the floor, dead, and calmly walks over to his glasses, which he dropped during the fight, and puts them back on his blood-covered face. Outside, Cyst, having heard the commotion, walks over to the house, unaware that Doug is waiting for him on the other side of the car parked next to it. He swings around with the axe, getting him in the left knee and causing him to slump against the front of the car, prompting Doug to put the axe into his back and dig it in, ripping out chunks of meat and blood before removing it. Cyst falls onto his back on the ground and Doug then turns the axe over (the close-up of him doing this often showed up in the advertisements) and puts its back spike down into his right eye. Having seen this from inside the house, Big Brain gets his walkie-talkie and tells Lizard to kill the baby. He smirks evilly at this, but it doesn't last long, as the revived Beast walks into his room, snarling, and charges at him, ripping him to bits.
Elsewhere, Ruby walks into the room where Catherine is being kept and smiles at her, while Doug, now wielding Cyst's shotgun, runs back to the house he was in before and searches it. In a horrific place that looks like a butcher's kitchen, Lizard grabs a meat cleaver from the sink and hobbles into the next room to do the deed, making Ruby move away from the squirming bundle on the table in front of her by grabbing her and pushing her. Doug heads into the bedroom in the house where Catherine was earlier, only to find a creepy-looking doll instead of his daughter, and to see the deformed kids, Venus and Mercury, in the next room when the former asks him to play with them. Frantic, Doug rushes back outside and down the street, while in his lair, Lizard prepares to kill the baby, raising the cleaver and pulling back the blanket covering her, only to find a piglet in her place. Letting out an enraged yell, he then yells for Ruby, while Doug, hearing Catherine crying, sees Ruby running across a nearby hilltop with her. Back at the trailer, Bobby and Brenda are still waiting and trying not to lose their nerves, when the fishing line he rigged up begins clicking rapidly. Knowing someone is close by, Brenda begins to panic and she and Bobby start searching the area, walking around the trailer, creeping to the front of the SUV, and following the line into the desert. His gun at the ready, Bobby leads Brenda down the road, waiting for whoever it is to show themselves, but then, they see that the line clicked because a bit of tumbleweed is caught on it and bumping it because of the wind. The two of them walk to the trailer, only to see that one of the SUV's back doors is now open. Rushing to it, they find that their mother's body is gone and Bobby frantically tells Brenda to get the trap in the trailer ready, though he has to snap her out of her delirium at her mother's corpse being taken for her to do it.
Following the blood trail from Ethel's body down into a narrow, rocky gorge, Bobby hears a snapping sound, followed by munching, and heads towards the corner up ahead. Reaching it, he sees Jupiter just beyond it, biting into his mother's corpse, tearing her heart out, and eating it. He gasps at this grisly sight and Jupiter, in turn, sees him. Spitting pieces of meat out, he chases after Bobby, yelling viciously, as the teen fires back at him as he runs. In the trailer, Brenda pulls out and unscrews the valves on a couple of propane tanks, while outside, Bobby manages to hit Jupiter in the shoulder but it does nothing to stop him. He falls to the ground and fires again, this time managing to him in his right hand but he still doesn't stop, and Bobby is now out of bullets. Bobby runs past the SUV and towards the trailer, Jupiter removing a pickaxe and throwing it at him, just barely missing him and sticking the side of the trailer. He manages to get through the door and shut it behind him, grabbing a piece with matches stuck in them and placing it against the bottom of the door, onto some sandpaper on the floor. He tells Brenda to go for the window in the back but when he joins there, they find that it's stuck. As Bobby tries to open it, Brenda backs away, only for Jupiter to smash his arm through another window behind her and grab her by the back of her shirt. He attempts to pull her through it but Bobby, upon grabbing some nylon rope, wrenches his hand off of her and ties his hands, which are on either side of the window frame, together with it, making him unable to escape. As he madly tries to get free, Bobby and Brenda escape out another window, climbing outside and running for cover into the hills. They duck behind a rocky outcropping, waiting for the explosion, while Jupiter manages to rip his hands free and heads around back to the trailer's front door. He opens it and pushes open the screen-door behind it, sliding the matches across the sandpaper and igniting the gas that's been filling the trailer. Jupiter is instantly engulfed in a huge explosion that completely obliterates the trailer, turning it into a massive fireball. From where they sit, Brenda happily embraces Bobby.
Back in the hills near the town, Doug makes his way through them, trying to catch Ruby, who's running through them while holding Catherine. He manages to come up over a ridge and intercept her, pointing the shotgun at her and making her stop. However, as they stand there, looking at each other, Ruby shows her good nature by attempting to hand Catherine over to him. But, before she can, Lizard jumps down on top of Doug from the ledge up above him, causing him to drop the gun. He slaps Doug across the face, grabs him by the hair and punches him square in it, and then picks him up by the throat. Doug manages to make him let go with a headbutt but Lizard takes the road spikes, which he wears around his torso like an ammo belt, and trips Doug, making him fall to the ground. Doug rolls away and avoids getting spiked, ducking when Lizard swings them at him and clips the rock wall behind him, but he does manage to get him on the right shoulder. He then rushes at Doug and puts him up against the wall with the spikes, but Doug grabs the wound on his leg, causing him to scream in pain and enable him to shove him off. But, as Ruby watches, Lizard swings his spikes and clips Doug in the face, sending him to the ground. Ruby runs up a narrow path along the hill, as Lizard bashes Doug's face into the ground. He then sees her and starts after her, yelling at her, as Doug slowly comes to down below and, despite the pain he's in, forces himself to get up. Lizard catches up to Ruby, grabs her by the leg, and pulls her down, demanding she give him the baby. She kicks him in the face and Doug shows up and follows that up by hitting him with the butt, sending down the side of the hill. Thoroughly enraged and frantic, Doug yells madly as he hits Lizard in the face again and again and again, sideswiping him with it, before shooting him in the stomach, the throat, and the left shoulder, the last shot making him spin around and fall with a thud. Walking up to Lizard as he lays there, Doug is still pointing the gun at him and nudges him with his foot to make sure he's dead. He then drops the gun and stumbles back towards Ruby, who hands Catherine to him. Doug happily embraces his daughter, laughing and kissing her. However, Lizard rises up behind him, bleeding all over but still alive, and, taking the gun, prepares to fire. Ruby, seeing this, rushes at him and tackles him right as he cocks the gun, the two of them going over the edge of the cliff as the gun goes off and falling to their deaths. Doug looks over the ledge and sees them lying in a heap on a large rock down below.
At the burning wreckage of the trailer, Bobby comes across the badly burned, wheezing, and impaled, but still living, Jupiter, who laughs evilly at him and tries to get at him. That's when Brenda comes running in with his own pickaxe and plants it in his forehead, spraying her face with blood in the process. Wiping away his blood, she puts her arm Bobby and tells him, "Let's get out of here," when she sees Doug show up with both Catherine and Beast. He immediately joins his sister in running up and embracing them, Brenda taking Catherine from the thoroughly exhausted Doug. As they stand there, hugging, it seems like everything is finally okay, until the movie ends with the camera pulling back to show them being watched through the lenses of another pair of binoculars.
Another thing these horror remakes tend to have in common is their music scores often aren't very memorable, but with The Hills Have Eyes, it's more half-and-half. The score, which features music by the duo, Tomandandy (Thomas Hajdu and Andy Milburn), as well as French composer, Francois-Eudes Chanfrault, who scored High Tension, is made up mostly of the generic-sounding, gloomy underscoring that often get in modern day horror films, but there are other parts of it that are memorable. During the really tense moments, there's this constant, electronic, "Dun. Dun. Dun," that you hear, as well as some really freakish, high-pitched screeching music that's akin to what you hear in heavy metal, which you hear when Brenda screams upon seeing Lynn get shot and when Doug finds himself trapped in the ice-box with the dead bodies, and kind of creepy-sounding variation on a western type of score. My personal favorite parts of the score, though, are these really heroic and triumphant pieces that play after Doug dispatches Pluto and when he really takes it to Lizard during the climax, as well as this nice, warm theme that plays when the survivors are reunited at the very end. There's also a mixture of old country songs, classic rock, and hard rock numbers on the soundtrack. The more notable examples of the former are the songs, More and More by Webb Pierce, which plays during the opening credits sequence, and In the Valley of the Sun by Buddy Stuart, which you hear playing inside Jeb's gas station and over the first half of the ending credits. Obviously, they're put in there to deliberately clash with the movie's really gruesome nature, especially in how More and More is off-set by the montage of atomic tests and the sudden images of mutations caused by them, but I've seen that done so many times and, frankly, in better ways, that it feels a little forced here. As for the rock, the most memorable to me is Leave the Broken Hearts by The Finalist, which plays over the latter part of the ending credits. Not a bad little song but not one I'm ever going to remember after this, either. The other songs are mainly buried in the background of certain scenes and, as a result, didn't leave much of an impression on me. All in all, the movie's soundtrack listing is about as mixed as the score itself.
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