NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

zachary_a_erickson-26701 This is probably one of the worst horror movies out there. It was bad enough that there was a remake, and even worse, that there's a sequel to the remake! This is movie is crap. Do not watch it.

bowmanblue Yes, I hate lazy horror remakes as much as the next fan of the genre. However, when it came to the ('original') remake of the Hills Have Eyes, I was actually pretty impressed. I guess I wasn't the only one as it seems to have spawned a sequel… which I also watched.I guess you could compare part 2 to 'Aliens' and part 1 to 'Alien.' Of course the major difference was that BOTH 'Alien' films were awesome whereas here, just adding soldiers and guns doesn't automatically make it better. The first film showed us what happened to a family when their camper van broke down in the middle of a desert and ended up at odds with the psychotic locals. Now, some time later in the same desert, a team of young – and not that particularly experienced – soldiers are on a training exercise. Guess what happens to them?! So our young recruits start getting attacked and picked off one by one in classic slasher style. You may think the fact that they're armed with guns and the locals have melee weapons gives them an advantage. It doesn't. Like I say they're VERY inexperienced, almost to the point of it being a little unrealistic how quickly they go down. However, part of the story is that they're not that good at what they do, so I guess I can let that one slide. Unfortunately, part of the problem with having all the characters dressed the same in their army gear makes them very difficult to tell who's who – especially when one dies and then you realise it was a different soldier. Not only this, they're all rather forgettable and you can hazard a guess which handful will make it all the way to the final reel as they're the only ones with vaguely identifiable character traits.Sadly, it's not just the people we're supposed to root for who have problems (dare I call them 'heroes?'). The mutated rednecks are just as bland. They're not that scary and the make-up and gore isn't up to the standards it would need to be to really stand out. There's a bit of gore and some nastiness here and there, but – again – nothing that you haven't seen before (and better!) if you've seen much of the horror genre.I may sound like I hated it, but I didn't. The problem is that it's just the very definition of 'average.' It's not bad, just completely forgettable. There are too many horror clichés in here to really make it work well and it's not a patch on either of the originals. Plus, if I have to hear someone say either 'We're going to get through this' (or a variation thereof) I may just hurl the remote at the TV screen.

Leofwine_draca My opinion on the HILLS HAVE EYES films varies. The first one I saw was the modern remake, which blew me away; sure, it told a familiar story of humans battling mutants, but the direction was strong, the violence visceral, and the pacing remarkable. It was a powerful, shocking film. Next up I saw the Craven original and, like a lot of Craven films, it disappointed me. I found it dated, flawed, and a film that paled in comparison next to the remake, which is unusual. My third exposure is the sequel to the remake, which takes the general premise and utterly wastes it on another ALIENS-inspired storyline of a squad of soldiers entering enemy territory and finding themselves getting picked off one by one by the villains.My biggest beef is that this film has so much wasted potential. Sure, there are outrageous gore effects occurring frequently in the film, but when they happen to uninteresting, uninspired characters, you feel like you're playing a computer game rather than getting involved in a real movie. The biggest disappointment is the script, which is obviously a rush job designed to cash in on the first film's success. Each and every soldier is depicted as either an idiot, a bully, or a thug, and they don't seem to have more than a couple of brain cells between them. Remember, these are the guys we're supposed to root for. Even the victims in a nameless Friday the 13th sequel of the '80s had more characterisation than this! We end up with a load of people scurrying around in some nondescript cave system, and even that's ripping off THE DESCENT. The acting's poor across the board, and the mutants are laughable rather than the fear-inducing creatures of the first film. I mean, the guy who's got that stony skin...is he really supposed to be menacing? They also die far too easily as well. I suppose one bonus is the short running time, but even that seems padded out to the max, throwing in lots of pointless sequences and leaving genuine sub-plots unfocused and hanging (the friendly mutant, for instance – what's the deal with him? He's like that guy in THE GOONIES, but I want to find out more about him!). This means that the only reason to watch THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 is to see an extended sequence of somebody beating someone else's head in with a rock.

Scarecrow-88 A group of inept National Guard soldiers (soldiers, used loosely), made up of kids almost right out of high school, are commissioned to a New Mexico desert after their commander in charge informs them of a deliverance of supplies to a scientific outpost. This desert just so happens to be where atomic testing was done, and there are still mutant inbred cannibal killers in them there hills. The film (a sequel and basic follow up to Alexander Aja's remake to Wes Craven's film from '77) is essentially soldiers (..snicker, snicker…) versus those grotesque atomic anomalies that wield weapons made from the environment. Sometimes the soldiers are dangerous to each other inadvertently (their commanding officer is shot during gunfire aimed at the mutants), but their inexperience (we see a training exercise exploit their fundamental inefficiencies in combat) doesn't help them, either. The mutants, with their cavernous hideouts and hideaways, are only a detriment to themselves, as well, often succumbing to their brute violent whims in trying to attack the soldiers who have guns at their disposal. Too much time is spent inside the hills, where it can be quite dark and cramped. Good practical effects and gore helps, I guess, but the film isn't as shocking as Aja's prior film or as much a gut punch in terms of those killed this go-around (a family unit is obliterated while the sequel offers a rag-tag bunch of kids not yet ready for the combat they are faced against). The bit with the victim found in a latrine is certainly not expected, though. A rape does exist against one of the tougher female soldiers (her development is that she looks often at a recording on her phone of her boy), which might be difficult to watch. Jessica Stroup looks out of place as the other female soldier among the group, while Lee Thompson Young (the young man who committed suicide while on the show Rizzoli & Isles) is the unfortunate token African-American of the cast who, despite her integrity and leadership skills, doesn't fare well. Michael McMillian has this inexplicable part as someone you wouldn't expect to see in the army…debates with his commanding officer and seemingly not fit to carry a gun (and generally annoying everyone) doesn't help his cause. Jacob Vargas is the hothead ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Amazingly, I expected more to die but the film offers the proposition that at least three survived (and not the candidates among the soldiers that seemed battle ready, perhaps a reason of irony). Surprisingly, Wes and his son put together the story for this rather average and forgettable horror show, which seems fit to be Wrong Turn 14. Morocco has never looked quite so intimidating, though.I think there's a sense that the Cravens were using the mutants to symbolize the unpredictable nature of battle in a place that very well might resemble Afghanistan or Iraq.