After the success of Alexandre Aja’s Hills (making around $70 million on a budget of $15 million) it was no surprise that a sequel was made. Released in 2007, Hills 2 is superficially different, but eventually becomes more of the same; freaky mutants, gruesome kills, mutant rape (why someone decided this should be a trademark of the films is beyond me), and people in way over their heads having to become savages to survive.
Set two years after the first film, Hills 2 opens with a mixed team of scientists and soldiers setting up remote sensors after the Army has conducted “search and destroy” operations in the area to clean up the mutant menace. They missed a few and the mutants attack, wiping out most of the team. We are then introduced to our protagonists, a group of National Guardsmen conducting training exercises who are detoured to drop off some gear to the scientists. The characters are all stereotypes: the peacenik, the Rambo-wannabe, the big dumb guy...we’ve seen them in a thousand movies and will see them in a thousand more.
In short order, they find their long-range radios don’t work, they split up with most of the squad going to rescue a lone survivor and their only vehicle is destroyed. The survivor, Colonel Redding (Jeff Kober) lasts long enough to tell the Guardsmen what they are up against and how doomed they are, before taking his own life. Well, that’s one option. The mutants begin to attack and pick off squad members rapidly. The squad leader is taken out by friendly fire - we knew he had to die, because he was the only guy who knew what to do - but this isn’t a bad variation on how he’s killed. There’s the usual characters doing dumb things. For example, right after one of the mutants is killed, a female soldier - Missy (Daniella Alonso, whose defining characteristic is that she has a son) - wanders off to relieve herself and is promptly snatched. This, of course, makes no sense. It’s always a problem when a movie relies on characters doing obviously dumb things to move the story forward.
The survivors head into a series of mines that honeycomb the area to rescue Missy and to try to find a way down the mountain they are stuck on. More soldiers and mutants are killed off and Missy is subjected a brutal rape by the head of the mutant clan. She is rescued, the mutant patriarch is killed and our heroes emerge from the mines. There is a cut back to the science camp where a mutant is using the sensors to monitor the movements of the survivors, presumably leading to their demise. The End.
Hills 2 is not bad, once you get past the stereotypical characters and some serious leaps in logic that are used in place of more sophisticated storytelling. The mutants have even less personality than those in the first movie. Also there are just some really dumb scenes. A good example is the death of Colonel Redding. When the squad finds him, he is torn to shreds, wedged between some rocks and barely alive. He then somehow manages to get up, walk past them, go to the edge of a cliff, give a little speech and then shoot himself. Given how the scene is blocked, this makes no sense spatially. However, the pace is so fast that it would be easy for the viewer to just gloss over the holes in the plot.
On the plus side, the mutant makeup is well done. The gore effects are graphic and creative. There pacing is quick and doesn’t slow down for the entire movie. The direction is competent. In general, you know what’s happening in the fight scenes and the director gets the most out of the mountainous terrain. The film suffers a bit from the third act being entirely in the mines. While it does create a dark and sinister wonderland for the mutants to stalk their prey, it gives the film a cheap, set-bound feel.
The biggest problem I have with this movie is the missed opportunity. A more interesting alternative would have been to show use the Army’s “search and destroy” mission, perhaps even crafting a story in which some of our sympathy would lie with the mutants. Given that they are trying to survive as best they can in a hostile environment and that we are told they were hunted down by the government, this approach could have taken the clash between mutant and normal family and turned of the first film and turned it on its head. Instead, we get a very “by-the-numbers” splatter flick. An entertaining one, for those who like this horror sub-genre; but nothing memorable.
If you’ve seen Aja’s film and liked it, I’d say check this one out. It’s definitely inferior to the original, but it does have enough twisted mutant fun and blood and brain splattering kills to keep you occupied for 97 minutes.
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