The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) Dir: Martin Weisz

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I had only recently watched this film's direct predecessor, which turned put to be a very shoddy remake of a Wes Craven directed 1977 classic. I was not exactly enamoured with it, but, be it boredom, masochism, or even a little of both, I decided to check out this equally low-rated sequel, directed by Martin Weisz. I was hoping it couldn't be any worse than that aforementioned first film, at least. Surely not, right?

To start off positively, I thought that the makeup and injury detail was actually fairly good, certainly an improvement upon the prior film. As regular readers of my reviews will know, I'm always appreciative of practical effects, even if they're a little bit subpar - the effort is appreciated. I won't pretend as though the effects were revolutionary, or anything of the sort, but I enjoyed them, for what they were.

Unfortunately, this is where things take a very significant downturn. The biggest issue was the abundance of unnecessary and gratuitous sexual horror. The first film had a little, which I didn't exactly enjoy, but it was brief enough to not dominate the film. This, however, had a number of genuinely very disturbing moments, which added absolutely nothing positive to the film at all. It's absolutely grim, in my opinion, and has no place in cinema.

Moving on to less upsetting critique, another issue I had with the film was, much like the first film, its writing. This was so terribly written, especially some of the dialogue. The characters had very little in the way of personality, and failed to interest me in the slightest. The story was equally disappointing. The survival aspect could have worked, but the extremely repetitive nature of the story meant that it all got stale pretty quick. For a ninety minute film, it dragged a lot. Everything was so inconsistent and lethargic.

The cast didn't help proceedings either, providing a host of mediocre performances that didn't inspire much in the way of compliments. Michael McMillian and Jessica Stroup at least felt like they were trying to provide compelling characters, even if they failed quite clearly, whilst Jacob Vargas was stuck poorly playing an irritating character that I got bored of instantly. The likes of Lee Thompson, Daniella Alonso, and Flex Alexander, are worth mentioning only for the substantial nature of their appearances.

Overall, this was another stinker and another example of unnecessary treatment of women to make mediocre horror. Some of the action in this film wasn't even that bad, but everything else around it dragged it down into the depths of filmmaking depravity. Thank goodness there wasn't another one to follow, because this mutant formular was tired-out way before they made this. Neither of these films have been particularly good, and I would be shocked to hear if they had too many fans. I'm certainly not one of them.