The Hills Have Eyes II

THE HILLS HAVE EYES II (2007) - July 23, 2007
Considering the frosty reception this got from the critics, I was bracing myself for something a lot worse. That's not to say that this was good, but it wasn't quite as bad as some people made it out to be. About a group of military trainees who find themselves being hunted down by the same group of mutants from the original film, the main problem here is Wes and Jonathan Craven's script. The characters are all generic and woefully underdeveloped, and say things like "I killed a man once, it was easy. That's why it's so scary." The performances are all fine, but bland, which doesn't really help matters -- it's pretty much impossible to care about these people as they get killed off. The direction, as long as you don't compare it to Alexandre Aja's, was actually fairly decent, and there were some pretty good bits of gore. Basically, this wasn't so great, but it could have been far worse. **