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The Hills Have Eyes
Based on Wes Craven's 1977 suspenseful cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carter family soon realizes the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.
2006 · Directed by Alexandre Aja · 107 min · Horror · Thriller · Screenplay in the scene database · 11 frames
Tagline
The lucky ones die first.
Plot
Retired detective 'Big' Bob Carter and his wife Ethel are traveling from Cleveland to San Diego through the New Mexico desert for their silver wedding anniversary; with them are their three children, Lynn, Brenda, and Bobby, Lynn's husband Doug and their baby daughter Catherine, and their two German Shepherds, Beauty and Beast. They stop at a gas station, where the elderly attendant suggests a different route through the hills, claiming it will save them a few hours. Not long after, their tires are punctured by a hidden spike strip, causing their car, which is towing a trailer, to crash.
Bob and Doug set off in opposite directions to find help, while the rest of the family stays by the trailer. Beauty escapes, and when Bobby chases her into the hills, he finds her butchered. Horrified, he flees back to the trailer, but falls off the hill on the way, knocking himself unconscious. A timid yet kind-hearted mutant named Ruby protects him from her brother, Goggle. Meanwhile, Bob arrives back at the gas station, where he finds newspaper clippings detailing various disappearances in the area after recent nuclear tests at a mining town by the US government that caused the mutants' deformities, as well as a bag of what he deduces to be the valuables of missing victims. He confronts the attendant, who then commits suicide. Bob attempts to flee in an abandoned car, but is subdued by the mutant leader, Papa Jupiter.
After Bobby is found by Brenda, Doug returns after heading towards the interstate. All he discovers at the end of the road is a huge crater filled with numerous abandoned cars and other belongings. When being pursued by Papa Jupiter, Bobby confesses his story to Doug and Lynn, just as Pluto and Lizard infiltrate the trailer. They attack and rape Brenda, who has stayed in the trailer with Catherine, while using a distraction of immolating Bob to divert the others. When Lynn and Ethel return to the trailer, Lizard shoots both of them before abducting Catherine and escaping with Pluto. Doug and Bobby return; Lynn and Ethel die shortly afterwards. Goggle, staying behind for recon, is set upon by Beast and mauled to death.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Grégory Levasseur, Alexandre Aja
- Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre
- Edited by: Baxter
- Music: tomandandy, Andy Milburn, Tom Hajdu
- Production design: Joseph C. Nemec III
- Produced by: Wes Craven, Peter Locke, Marianne Maddalena, Samy Layani
Cast
- Aaron Stanford as Doug
- Dan Byrd as Bobby
- Emilie de Ravin as Brenda
- Vinessa Shaw as Lynn
- Ted Levine as Big Bob
- Kathleen Quinlan as Ethel
- Tom Bower as Gas Station Attendant
- Billy Drago as Papa Jupiter
- Robert Joy as Lizard
- Desmond Askew as Big Brain
Production
- Country: France, United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Fox Searchlight Pictures, Craven-Maddalena Films, Major Studio Partners, Dune Entertainment
- Budget: $15,000,000
- Box office: $69,623,713
- Themes: van, rape, ambush, gas station, new mexico, gore, remake, serial killer, slasher, brutality
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