The Hills Have Eyes 2 Review

The sequel to last year's inventive horror remake has arrived with what seems like indecent haste, but it's well made and extremely enjoyable if you like this sort of thing. There's even less plot than there was last time round. A group of eight rookie soldiers and their gung ho sergeant (the brilliantly named Flex Alexander) arrive at a New Mexico desert outpost in order to deliver some equipment to a bunch of atomic scientists. However, when they get there, they discover that the place is deserted and when they spot something moving up in the hills they decide to investigate, with predictably gory results. And things get worse when they realise that the Radioactive Mutants want to grab the women for breeding purposes…

The film lacks both the character development (of both mutants and victims) and the sympathy factor of the first film, but it's no less enjoyable for that. The characters tick all the horror movie cliché boxes (Jessica Stroup's feisty blonde, Daniella Alonso's equally feisty brunette, Michael McMillian's nerdy outsider, Jacob Vargas' foul-mouthed bully, etc) but they're attractively played and manage to deliver the stating-the-obvious dialogue ("We gotta get the hell outta here - these things are gonna kill us!"; "They're picking us off one by one!") without generating unintended laughs.

In addition, the film is smartly directed by German director Martin Weisz, building suspense and an extremely tense atmosphere before descending into outright gore for the brain-splattered finale (Peter Jackson would be proud). There are also a couple of enjoyably twisted gags and the fact that it's the victims who are carrying the guns makes for an interesting twist. In short, this is a worthy sequel and a treat for genre fans - if you enjoyed the first film then you won't be disappointed.