Dir. Alexandre Aja
Writ. Gregory Levasseur
Act. Ted Levine, Kathleen Quinlan, Aaron Stanford

Proving once again the there are no original ideas coming out of Hollywood, especially concerning horror movies, Hollywood makes another movie that's basic premise is not on the front pages of the newspaper's anymore which is why it fails in providing any kind real scares in the movie. There are a few shocks but mostly I just laughed.

The story goes that a family on the way to California is given the wrong directions by a guilt ridden gas attendant and end up getting stuck in the middle of the desert where a bunch of cannibalistic deformed humans are living. The cannibals are actually offspring of a bunch of miners who would not live their little camp that was going to become the sight of nuclear weapons test. So the miners became deformed because of the radiation as was their offspring. The family stuck in this desert gets picked off one by one until only the youngest two, two teenagers, and the older brother-in-law are left to go hunt down and find the baby that was taken by the cannibals.

I can remember when I was a kid in the seventies the talk about what nuclear radiation could do to living organisms. I remember a movie where the earth was infested with mutant killer cockroaches and giant scorpions after a nuclear war. The original movie, The Hills Have Eyes, was really a piece on what the nuclear powers were doing to the planet with all of these tests. However, in today's world, nuclear radiation isn't exactly prevalent so the basic premise of the movie is hokey. I also would have a hard time believing that family could just disappear in the desert and not one single law enforcement agency go looking for them. With today's technology, I am sure we would find them.

There really isn't much to this movie. People die by funny and amusing ways, good guy goes and kill bad guys in even more fun and amusing ways and in the end we are left wondering who is left in the hills. I have not seen the original so I don't know if the mother, father, and oldest sister get killed in that movie, but I was mildly surprised when it happened in this one, and rather quickly too. I did not like the rape scene, or attempted rape scene, they are becoming way to common in movies and I don't understand why we need to see it on film, when we know it is out there in real life.

There was 20 minutes in the movie where the brother-in-law character was a Bruce Campbell like character where he is going on a revenge kick to find his kid. I liked that just because even though he wasn't constantly getting his ass kicked, which provided a hint of realism, he found a way to kill the bad guys. Other than that there is nothing that was entertaining about the movie.

Obviously I am not going to recommend this movie. I also purposely did not mention the actor's or actresses by name because I don't want people to think they are B-list actors because they are in this movie. With the exception of some minor over-acting, everyone in the film either has had or will have a good career, so I don't want to tarnish their name by mentioning them in the film.

Skip this movie and wait for something better to come along, if that is possible.

Brian - the Naked Gun