"THE HILLS HAVE EYES"

The ultimate criteria for bad horror films should be the inclusion of the POV shot of the attacker/inflictor of horror, as he/she/it breathes heavily. When has this shot ever worked effectively? Agreed, suggesting the presence of the mysterious, malignant element might be necessary, but what’s the point of using the POV if the audience hasn’t been introduced to that character/entity yet? It probably goes back to the difference between startling the viewer and actually scaring him/her, a difference that modern horror directors seem not to understand whatsoever. The POV, deep breathing shot says: “You’re about to be startled by something creepy, and you don’t know what it is.” However, if you watch enough horror movies, you will recognize what is truly scary is what you as a viewer know going into a suspenseful scene, not what you don’t know.
This movie gives a French director the chance to examine, torture, judge, then prod and reshape the American family in a post-9/11 world, upon being faced with a similarly incomprehensible attack by a similarly foreign force. He presents us with a tough, mustached, gun-toting father, his apparently once-hippie wife, their characterless son, iPod and sunblock-bearing daughter, other older married daughter, and her inadequate, tech-savvy but spineless husband, in the eyes of his disapproving father-in-law. Following the horror film dictum that those killed off first are those most deserving of death, the French director immediately punishes by literally crucifying the self-assured, revolver-brandishing American patriarch. Next the sultry blonde younger daughter is promptly reprimanded for a previous scene in which she sunbathed in her bra by being raped by one of the nuclear test-affected mutant villains. The political killings end with the father though, because the mother and older daughter die next in line with the traditional horror film logic: we don’t care or know about their characters enough. Odd then that the son lives, though the director flirts with the idea of him dying first by having him go missing for a long time (probably so we don’t have to spend more time with a character we’re indifferent about).
As always, it is of interest to look at the make-up of the unit that the film deems worthy of life at the end. As determined as the film is to disturb the viewer, it keeps the baby alive. This is just to stay within the rules of the genre, though. Basically, the unit is the blonde daughter, the son, and the son-in-law. Naturally, you need a male and a female so that the human race can survive. This can’t be the married daughter and her husband, because horror never spares married couples. Can’t be the mom, cause she doesn’t have enough of a character. So, the director chooses to keep the blonde, sexpot daughter alive—punished but not wholly damned for her open sexuality. One might interpret this as a shift in values from the horror films of the 80’s, in which the morals of the time dictated that the virgin dies last (or not at all), while the slut (read: sexually liberated) goes first. But this is nothing new; one only need watch the films of Eli Roth to see that these days, the sexually innocent are just as doomed as the promiscuous. Thus, the son survives only to diffuse the sexual connection between the daughter and the other daughter’s husband—a connection nonetheless emphasized previously in a single shot in which the son-in-law gazes lazily at Brenda the blonde sunbathing.
Most interesting is that the director mocks the son-in-law’s cautious finnickiness (to the point where he is clearly the most obnoxious character at the outset) but allows him to live, after he mans up, uses his tech smarts to outthink the mutants, and is moved to brandish a weapon (first a bat, then an axe, then a pump-action shotgun) against the evildoers. Previously jeered by the blonde daughter for being a Democrat and thereby “not believing in guns,” the arc of the character of Doug articulates the director’s oh-so-articulate thesis, which is basically “No American is prepared for attacks perpetrated by groups that have suffered at the hands of the U.S. government…except maybe the Democrat, if he gets over his fear of guns.” Simplistic this is, but so is the subtext of the shot where Doug rams a pole donning the American flag into the head of one of the mutant, flesh-eating zombies.
That’s another thing—I can’t be scared of chemical-influenced mutants if they look like a cross between Sloth from The Goonies and Gary Busey. Especially when it goes unexplained that these mutants would (naturally) want to feast on human flesh. Make them human or wholly inhuman, but don’t leave them somewhere in between or I feel like I’m on the Haunted Hayride, where poorly paid teenagers don cross-eyed masks and jump out at you and say things like “Get out of here!” or “You’re going to die!” in silly, raspy voices.
To the credit of Aja (the director), he fills the climax with images of styrofoam mannequins posing as family members in a house that sat on a nuclear testing site in the 1950’s—a house now run by victims of that same testing. It’s a potent image, unfortunately ruined by the whole Sloth/Gary Busey thing.