Wednesday, 29 November 2006

Watch the hills, or not... ***

I'm irresistably drawn to horror flicks, no matter how cheesy, campy or plain bad they are. After all, I chose to write about Ed Wood's films during my film course at university, and even though his films may not have been meant to be horror flicks, they almost inevitably fulfilled one or more of the above characteristics. Anyone who watches a horror flick with me would probably end up being the horror star by strangling me to death, because I've this quirky habit of shouting instructions to the hunted victims-to-be, which can be pretty damn irritating but I'm quite immune to it, naturally.

In The Hills Have Eyes, I kept shouting to the kid who ran after his runaway dogs NOT to pursue them into the unknown wilderness of the New Mexico desert, NOT to waste ammunition firing in panic or at targets more than fifteen metres away with a pistol (most effective range), NOT to try taking on the sick twisted mutants with amateur booby-trap making skills. I also shouted at Doug (the poor brother-in-law who had his wife killed brutally and baby girl kidnapped) NOT to try tackling all the mutants with only a baseball bat (at least have a shotgun and a chainsaw). Neither one listened. I thought they deserved to die for not heeding my advice but the script was surprisingly merciful.

It is only on this basis that I actually cared a little about the fates of the characters that this flick earns its rating from me. There are too few scares, too few deaths, too few spine-chilling moments for this to be anywhere even close to memorable. Even the somewhat gruesome factor from the nuclear-testing radiation victims lacks punch, especially when compared to the documentaries I've watched about Hiroshima survivors. You won't dislike or be bored by it, but you wouldn't miss anything if you take a detour around the hills either.

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