THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Alexandre Aja. Co-screenwriter: Grégory Levasseur, billed as Gregory Levasseur.)

Plot: A vacationing family, lost in a desert, are hunted by mutants.

 

Review

Aja’s remake of Wes Craven’s 1977 shocker is a slicker, less raw, more-tightly scripted film. The savagery─malicious violence, rape and killing is still in-your-face and gory, and the underpinnings of national unease are still there. Also: this remake shows more of the nuclear test town and the automotive graveyard; and the remake is more overt in its political-divide commentary, e.g., Big Bob and Doug’s Right Wing/Left Wing exchanges are explicit in their political barbs—Ted Levine (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 1991) and Kathleen Quinlan, as ex-cop Big Bob and his ex-hippie wife, Ethel, represent Red State thinking; their daughter, Lynn (Vinessa Shaw) and her husband (Doug, played by Aaron Stanford) represent Blue State leanings. Lynn’s siblings, Bobby (Dan Byrd) and Brenda (Emilie de Ravin) aren’t solidly political yet. And of particular interest to the cannibals there’s Lynn and Doug’s baby.

Like Craven’s original film, inspired by Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), there’s a steady build-up of small-but-unsettling events that, midway through the film, become more overt, terrifying and deadly.

Veteran actor Tom Bower is great as the “Gas Station Attendant”─ Bower, in this excellent cast, stands out in what might be one of the most rewarding roles in HILLS, as a man struggling with his conscience.

The mutant cast: Michael Bailey Smith (Pluto); Robert Joy (the lecherous Lizard); Laura Ortiz (Ruby); Ezra Buzzington (Goggle); Greg Nicotero, HILLS’s special makeup effects designer, played Cyst; and cold-gazed Billy Drago (THE UNTOUCHABLES, 1987) as the family patriarch, Papa Jupiter.

“Remake” is understandably a bad word in many movie-goers mouths, but this second-time-around take on HILLS is a well-made, timely flick worth watching if you’re not an originals-only purist, and willing to judge the 2006 version on its own merits.

CRAWL (2019)

 

(Director: Alexandre Aja. Screenwriters: Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen.)

Review

As a Category 5 hurricane threatens to bear down on her Florida hometown, professional swimmer Haley goes to check on her father (Dave) at the behest of her long-distance sister (Beth, played by Morfydd Clark). Haley’s relationship with Dave is strained because of his recent divorce with her mother─Haley blames herself for their breakup, because of all the time Dave spent coaching her swimming.

When she finds him, he’s seriously injured and trapped in the basement of their old, unlived-in house. She devises a way to get the out of the flood zone as the storm worsens, and then an alligator strikes─setting off series of increasingly terrifying and potentially catastrophic events not only for her and her father but for those around them.

Rated R for bloody (but not excessive) violence, terror, and tension, this relatively short (hour and twenty-seven-minute) film is perfectly edited (credit: Elliot Greenberg), with great writing, acting, cinematography, set design and direction. Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen (among their credits John Carpenter's THE WARD, 2010) keep the inventive and situation-ratcheting terror element constant and theme-true, whilst underlining the story with relatable human concern and warmth. Lucy Eyre’s set design and Ketan Waikar and Dragan Kaplarevic’s art direction is convincing and detailed, as are the mostly CGI alligators and their briefly gory attacks; Maxime Alexandre’s cinematography is appropriately storm-dark, often claustrophobic, and water-hued as the locations for the nature-sourced attacks shift between characters and places. And director Alexandre Aja, whose work is often amazing (in a good way), horror-true and laced with humor, masterfully guides this top-notch terror flick with its various-angle camera shots and tableaux.

Not only that, CRAWL’s two leads are excellent in their roles. Kaya Scodelario (RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, 2021) is great as Haley, whose parental-divorce transition is as tumultuous as the waters that threaten to drown her and her father. Barry Pepper, a consistently excellent character actor, nails it as Dave, Haley and Beth’s sad, loving but coach-hard father. Ross Anderson, in his brief role as Wayne (a roadworker who crushes on Beth), is immediately likeable with his boyish charm. Trigger, Dave’s wiry-haired, scrappy mutt, is a charmer, too.

CRAWL is not only one of the best horror films of 2019, it’s also one of the best overall films of that year. If you’re a fan of films like ALLIGATOR (1980, starring Robert Forster), PIRANHA 3D (another Aja-helmed movie) and works of that ilk, check out CRAWL.