Movie Review- Hills Have Eyes 2

Hills have eyes 2 (2007)

Martin Weisz

Brief Plot Outline: A squad of soldiers are sent to a military outpost in the Mexican dessert to deliver a piece of equipment to the scientists researching there. The scientists are all mysteriously missing along with their security escort. Inbred mutants seem to be the cause.

Which two scenes impressed you the most? Why? How has watching the film helped you understand this genre of filmmaking? Which features on the genre checklist did you spot in the film? When? How? The first scene that really caught my attention is where a soldier who seems to be semi-pacifist and a female soldier have just killed a mutant when another one, who is blind, comes into the room. The use of montage and silence of the room (apart from sniffing and snarling from mutant) make the scene very tense. That along with the drool and gore of the mutant in extreme close ups. I also was rather impressed with the final fight scene between the ‘father’ mutant and the 3 survivors. The fight is incredibly tense with very fast paced montage shots and with each the survivors and mutant taking it in turns to have the seemingly upper hand. The gore also used in this fight scene is quite horrific, with the survivors impaling the mutant with several long objects (phallic symbols) and the mutant still fighting on.

How has watching this film helped you understand this genre of filmmaking? Which features on the genre checklist did you spot in the film? When? How?  The film used many different generic horror features. The film had slow stupid monsters, and a lot of the soldiers sacrifice their selves and are always inclined to save the females so we also have the male hero feature. We also see 2 brave female survivors, dark hair and not wearing tight clothes or makeup and they also fight back the mutants. There was lots of body horror throughout like the impaling of the ‘father’ mutant.  My favourite piece of body horror being a soldier who is caught hanging down a cliff face by a mutant and then having his arm severed from his body causing the body to fall whilst the mutant is still holding the soldiers arm. Restricted narration is used during the rape scene with the ‘father’ mutant preparing a female soldier and then the camera pans to the shadow of the rape rather than the actual mutant. As most of the film is set in an underground creepy cave low key lighting is used a lot. Whenever a piece of body horror is used an extreme close up usually follows. Parallel sound was used throughout as contrapuntal would have given the film a comedic feel. Most generic horror themes were included with the mutants being very sadistic, sex was included with the emphasis on the mutants wanting to breed and the isolated research station and underground caves showing the isolation of the whole setting.

Which aspects of the film would you like to include in your own trailer? Why? Watching this film has changed my view on body horror and violence horror films in a whole. I now believe an excessive amount of gore can be used and isn’t always cheesy and gore for the sake of gore. A strongly thought out isolated location I would also like to use as this would give the film a scare factor from the off which this film included very well. Sexism, sex and the taboo and sadism were used very well in this film to create a scary atmosphere and I would try to include this in my film but with a contemporary twist. For example female monsters wanting to rape men and in a role reversal just to mix things up and keep with the modern feminist context.

What aspects of the film would you like to avoid in your own trailer? Why? I will avoid rape scenes in my film as this makes the audience feel uncomfortable rather than scared although rape is used as the final straw to eliminate all compassion we have for a character monster. It alienates the majority of the female audience which is half of the target audience. I would also like to avoid the stupidity of the protagonists. It makes the film seem too cheesy and predictable. For example, having 2 survivors left in an area and deciding to split up to find people when they know a family of blood thirsty monsters are after them. Another example is when they waste all their bullets in rapid succession and don’t even hit their target. You would think trained soldiers would know what to do in an emergency situation and would be able to shoot and huge slow moving monsters without missing.

What was the best aspect/ more enjoyable moment of the film? Why? Can you recreate this in your own film? How? I rather enjoyed the fight scenes. A huge slow moving monster taking so much pain and punishment without seemingly noticing while the survivors scrambling around for a sharp weapon (phallic symbol) to finish him off. The fights were really tense with each side seeming to gain the upper hand and then the other stealing it in the flash of an eye. This would be very hard to recreate due to a lack of action movie effects and I would much rather make an atmospheric creepy horror than an action horror.