IMDb RATING
5.1/10
70K
YOUR RATING
A group of National Guard trainees find themselves battling against a vicious group of mutants on their last day of training in the desert.A group of National Guard trainees find themselves battling against a vicious group of mutants on their last day of training in the desert.A group of National Guard trainees find themselves battling against a vicious group of mutants on their last day of training in the desert.
Fatiha Quatili
- Afghan Woman
- (as Fatiha Ouatili)
Featured reviews
A team of trainees of the National Guard brings supply to the New Mexico Desert for a group of soldiers and scientists that are installing a monitoring system in Sector 16. They do not find anybody in the camp, and they receive a blurred distress signal from the hills. Their sergeant gathers a rescue team, and they are attacked and trapped by deformed cannibals, having to fight to survive.
The 1977 "The Hills Have Eyes" is a classic of horror and the 2006 version is an unnecessary, but good remake. This sequel is shameful, using a predictable collection of clichés and violence to explore the success of the original movies. The rookies soldiers have the most imbecile and unreasonable attitudes along the story, probably because they have been trained by the ridiculous sergeant, facilitating the retarded evil creatures to destroy one by one. This disappointing film was a great deception for me. My vote is five.
Title (Brazil): "O Retorno dos Malditos" ("The Return of the Damned")
The 1977 "The Hills Have Eyes" is a classic of horror and the 2006 version is an unnecessary, but good remake. This sequel is shameful, using a predictable collection of clichés and violence to explore the success of the original movies. The rookies soldiers have the most imbecile and unreasonable attitudes along the story, probably because they have been trained by the ridiculous sergeant, facilitating the retarded evil creatures to destroy one by one. This disappointing film was a great deception for me. My vote is five.
Title (Brazil): "O Retorno dos Malditos" ("The Return of the Damned")
This one was... fine. Far less successful than the first but not entirely unentertaining. It started off kind of irritating with a very dude-bro air to it and a lot of bad acting/annoying characters... which both of which continue to persist throughout the entire film.
Compared to the first with one thing about it that made it so successful, this one did the opposite on this crucial thing... they put gore before story. The plot was very light here and felt like it was more a vehicle to see mutant mutilation and shock value rather than having a solid story.
As stated, it wasn't entirely unsuccessful it just wasn't anything special like the first one. Would recommend if you like dudes, guns and mutants.
Compared to the first with one thing about it that made it so successful, this one did the opposite on this crucial thing... they put gore before story. The plot was very light here and felt like it was more a vehicle to see mutant mutilation and shock value rather than having a solid story.
As stated, it wasn't entirely unsuccessful it just wasn't anything special like the first one. Would recommend if you like dudes, guns and mutants.
Last year's remake of 'The Hills Have Eyes' was one of the better attempts to update the vaguely exploitational horror flicks of the 1970s for a new audience. Alexandre Aja allowed for an admirable degree of character development and when the violence started it was mean and savage and all carried out in a landscape of impeccable photography and production design. I was one of the few people who actually thought that it was better than the original and looked forward to a second visit to the particularly dark and cruel world of the savage desert mutants.
'The Hills have Eyes 2', released just a year after the original, seems a rushed and ill-conceived attempt to cash in on the franchise with little thought to quality. Jonathan Craven's screenplay could have been written in a weekend, and given the speed with which this movie made it into cinemas, probably was. It falls back on every hackneyed genre cliché in the book while offering absolutely nothing new to the desert mutant mythology. I always let out a groan of disappointment when a sequel replaces civilian characters with the military. Soldiers are always so lazily written and never fail to thoroughly bore with crude caricatures of strutting macho bullshit. In my mind, 'Aliens' was the only movie to successfully make such a transition, due to James Cameron's talent, not simply for directing the best action sequences around, but never forgetting that an audience has to care about the people being butchered. He was also ably assisted by some genuinely talented actors. With 'The Hills have Eyes 2', it's clear that video director Martin Weisz is no James Cameron, and the cast of television bit-parters haven't the talent or even the inclination to turn their cardboard cutout characters into anything approaching living, breathing human beings.
Needless to say, every character is a broad and generic cliché. They act in dumb and illogical ways, making dumb and illogical decisions that lead them to predictably dumb and illogical deaths. The latter half of the movie becomes just another tedious chased-through-dark-corridors scenario. 'The Descent' (on which Sam McCurdy, coincidentally, also worked as cinematography) proved that even this most derivative of sequences can still be carried out with genuine originality and suspense, but we see no such innovation here.
'The Hills Have Eyes 2' is just a very lazy movie, devoid of any suspense, tension, or surprise, with not a single individual involved remotely interested in producing anything of quality. It's a tame and tired excuse for a sequel and deserves to spend the rest of its life in a Blockbuster's bargain bin.
'The Hills have Eyes 2', released just a year after the original, seems a rushed and ill-conceived attempt to cash in on the franchise with little thought to quality. Jonathan Craven's screenplay could have been written in a weekend, and given the speed with which this movie made it into cinemas, probably was. It falls back on every hackneyed genre cliché in the book while offering absolutely nothing new to the desert mutant mythology. I always let out a groan of disappointment when a sequel replaces civilian characters with the military. Soldiers are always so lazily written and never fail to thoroughly bore with crude caricatures of strutting macho bullshit. In my mind, 'Aliens' was the only movie to successfully make such a transition, due to James Cameron's talent, not simply for directing the best action sequences around, but never forgetting that an audience has to care about the people being butchered. He was also ably assisted by some genuinely talented actors. With 'The Hills have Eyes 2', it's clear that video director Martin Weisz is no James Cameron, and the cast of television bit-parters haven't the talent or even the inclination to turn their cardboard cutout characters into anything approaching living, breathing human beings.
Needless to say, every character is a broad and generic cliché. They act in dumb and illogical ways, making dumb and illogical decisions that lead them to predictably dumb and illogical deaths. The latter half of the movie becomes just another tedious chased-through-dark-corridors scenario. 'The Descent' (on which Sam McCurdy, coincidentally, also worked as cinematography) proved that even this most derivative of sequences can still be carried out with genuine originality and suspense, but we see no such innovation here.
'The Hills Have Eyes 2' is just a very lazy movie, devoid of any suspense, tension, or surprise, with not a single individual involved remotely interested in producing anything of quality. It's a tame and tired excuse for a sequel and deserves to spend the rest of its life in a Blockbuster's bargain bin.
THHE2 is entertaining in that you'll laugh a lot and cringe and probably say "oh sh*t!" and "get your face away from the goddamn hole you dumb**s" or things along those lines but I don't know if its really worth seeing- I was very annoyed throughout the entirety with the horrible military characters who don't seem to know the first thing about combat.
Yes there was more violence, gore, and a higher body count than the first one but I am still am debating whether that cancels out my feeling throughout the whole movie about how ridiculous it is (and not a good ridiculousness like Dead Alive or Feast). My time would have been better spent watching Aja's remake for the 5th time.
So go for some laughs, or go for some gore, but don't go hoping to come out of it satisfied.
Yes there was more violence, gore, and a higher body count than the first one but I am still am debating whether that cancels out my feeling throughout the whole movie about how ridiculous it is (and not a good ridiculousness like Dead Alive or Feast). My time would have been better spent watching Aja's remake for the 5th time.
So go for some laughs, or go for some gore, but don't go hoping to come out of it satisfied.
Even though it was generally well-received by genre fans, I found the remake of classic "The Hills Have Eyes" to be a typical modern remake. The casting was questionable and the overused shaky-cam was nausea-inducing. French director Alejandra Aja bypassed the original's subtle commentary on the American family post-Vietnam for some half-assed shock scenes that he claimed better fit the contemporary American situation. Huh? I also found the storyline to be much too close to it's predecessor.
Well, the sequel is a surprising improvement (and significantly better than the original's sequel from '85, too.) The storyline is different, the shaky-cam is only used a couple times (and less...shaky), and the filmmakers were wise enough to ditch the half-baked social commentary for a straight-up horror gorefest. And it's a lot of nasty fun! There's lots of very sick ideas here that most horror fans can probably appreciate. The acting is average, the characters are pretty much indistinguishable, and it's rather formulaic, but if you can get past all of that, then this one is good times.
Well, the sequel is a surprising improvement (and significantly better than the original's sequel from '85, too.) The storyline is different, the shaky-cam is only used a couple times (and less...shaky), and the filmmakers were wise enough to ditch the half-baked social commentary for a straight-up horror gorefest. And it's a lot of nasty fun! There's lots of very sick ideas here that most horror fans can probably appreciate. The acting is average, the characters are pretty much indistinguishable, and it's rather formulaic, but if you can get past all of that, then this one is good times.
Did you know
- TriviaOriginally Wes Craven had the idea of Brenda, from the first film, enlisting in the National Guard to overcome her fears, only to be sent back to the same desert with the mutants. She was to be the only one who knew where the mutants hideout was located. This idea was cut since the actress was involved with Lost (2004) at the time.
- GoofsEvery U.S. soldier is trained, often through repeated "corrective action", never to let his or her weapon out of his or her sight. The characters do this frequently, even before they encounter the mutants.
- Alternate versionsThe unrated version is almost one minute longer than the theatrical version with mainly extended scenes of graphic violence and gore added.
- SoundtracksOwn Little World (Remorse Code Remix)
Written by Klayton
Performed by Celldweller
Courtesy of Fix It Music
By Arrangement with Position Music
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Despertar del diablo 2
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $15,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $20,804,166
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $9,686,362
- Mar 25, 2007
- Gross worldwide
- $37,697,773
- Runtime1 hour 29 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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