Alex Aja’s Blood-soaked ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ Remake is Among the Best, and It’s Now on Streaming
Remakes are often maligned among horror fans, but without them we wouldn’t have films like The Fly, The Thing, or The Blob. Granted, for all of the gems there are, there’s an equal measure of awful remakes as well. The line that separates the remakes between great and lackluster usually falls upon the director, their […]
Remakes are often maligned among horror fans, but without them we wouldn’t have films like The Fly, The Thing, or The Blob. Granted, for all of the gems there are, there’s an equal measure of awful remakes as well. The line that separates the remakes between great and lackluster usually falls upon the director, their vision, and their intent for the new update. In the case of The Hills Have Eyes, it was original creator Wes Craven that saw an opportunity to update his gritty 1977 film after seeing the success of remakes like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the early aughts.
After watching High Tension, Craven approached director Alexandre Aja and his screenwriting partner Gregory Levasseur about the possibility of updating his film with the caveat that it has a new approach and something worthwhile in justifying its existence in the first place. The collaboration between the horror master and the new voices in French extreme horror resulted in one vicious remake that managed to top the original.
And, in a rare turn, The Hills Have Eyes is now streaming on Tubi.
The plot is essentially the same; the suburban Carter family are caravanning from Ohio to California with their two dogs in tow, but wind up stranded in the desert. There they are relentlessly hunted and killed by the twisted cannibal family that resides in the desert hills. In Aja and Levasseur’s hands, their version of The Hills Have Eyes is an onslaught of tense violence and the pacing much faster. The cannibal family is also much more monstrous.
