A remake of 1977 Wes Craven film, The Hills Have Eyes is Hollywood's latest attempt to rehash a classic horror flick and punch up the gore a little, hoping to make a smash hit. This is just more proof that Hollywood is well on its way to eating itself alive.

Directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension), the film follows the misfortunes of a family on a road trip in the Californian desert. Stopping at a gas station, a creepy attendant tells them about a 'short cut' (we all know what that means). The family drives into an abandoned nuclear test area and has a run in with some mutated hill-dwellers who take pleasure in killing and eating anything that comes by.

Although the mutants have no purpose other than to brutally kill innocent family members, the movie surprisingly has only one horrific sequence: where Doug Bukowski's wife and parents-in-law are murdered. Bukowski, played by Aaron Stanford, then sets out to find his baby girl who is stolen by the hill people: a cat and mouse game with its share of lacklustre overused 'scary' moments that make you laugh rather than cringe.

The cast does its job well. They can all scream, run, wield household weapons, and of course get splattered with lots and lots of blood. The hill people all have a different deformity and are all equally gruesome. One of them in particular, the Brain, looks like something out of a Chris Cunningham music video. Unfortunately the script, adapted by Aja and Grégory Levasseur, doesn't lend itself to making these creatures terrifying. They merely wallow in obscurity, jumping out of corners, saying a word or two, and making creepy grunting noises.

At the end, the audience has had its fill of horror clichés, including the family dog conveniently attacking any baddie that has backed someone into a corner. In a bizarre decision, the powers that be decided to go with a 'or is it?' ending hoping it might revitalize the dreadfully boring 3rd act. The tagline for this movie is: 'The Lucky Ones Die First.' Yes, because they don't have to sit through the rest of it.

Rated TBC (South)/18 (North) (see IFCO website for details)
The Hills Have Eyes is released nationwide on 10th March 2006.
The Hills Have Eyes – Official website