The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)

Directed by Martin Weisz. Starring Michael McMilliam, Jessica Stroup, Flex Anderson, Lee Thompson Young, Jacob Vargas, Daniella Alonso, Eric Edelstein, Reshad Strik, Ben Crowley, Jeff Kober, Michael Bailey Smith. [R]

A couple years after the family from the previous Hills movie was savagely attacked by a clan of monstrous mutants in the New Mexico desert, a detachment of not-very-bright National Guardsmen are dispatched on a search-and-rescue mission once they find a camp of scientists in the same “sector” abandoned. Before long, the cannibal psychos start picking them off one by one (if there’s one thing that cannibal psychos are good at, it’s…well, eating human flesh; but if there’s two things that cannibal psychos are good at, the other is picking off their victims one by one). A brutal bore without a single decent scare or one iota of redeeming social value; pretty repugnant to boot, especially in depicting the freakish behavior of its mindless villains, given even less “personality” this time than the last. Not a single one of the soldiers is worth investing interest in, and in a retread of the earlier picture, the ostensible lead character is a pacifist-type forced to commit unspeakable acts of violence to survive. Smith appeared in this film’s predecessor as a different murderous mutant. Written by Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan; Wes also co-produced. Bears virtually no resemblance to the sequel to the original 1977 The Hills Have Eyes.

19/100