The Hills Have Eyes Part II: 40 Years Of The Laziest Horror Sequel

“You can’t sit on this for the rest of your life.”

I really wish Wes Craven had. A therapist speaks these words to Bobby, one of the few characters left alive at the end of The Hills Have Eyes, in an early scene of the sequel. And so begins a truly disatrious, flimsy film that should have remained firmly sat on. A sequel that alternates between the laziest and strangest choices. That’s not the opening scene, of course. That would be an extended flashback to the first film, reusing footage in a way that makes the extensive recaps of the Friday the 13^th series seem like the slightest of repeats. Any excuse to eat into the 90-minute runtime with old footage is leapt on. Infamously, even the dog has a flashback. But the issues run much deeper than that one mocked moment…

It takes an awful lot of effort to make a film, even a bad one, and I usually hate the complaint that the creatives weren’t trying hard enough, but in this case I think it’s fair to say Wes Craven didn’t put his heart into it. It was a low point in his career, following multiple failures he was pushed into writing and directing this sequel, which was ultimately never truly finished and then finally released after his resurgence with A Nightmare on Elm Street, the safety sequel almost then becoming his undoing.

The film may begin by revisiting the character of Bobby, but it then makes its first bizarre move by having him disappear completely. The set up of the film seems to be that Bobby, fearful of the desert after his encounter with the mutant family, is going to have to overcome his fear and journey back to truly exorcise that part of his life. Nope. He’s too scared so stays behind and we never see him again, with Ruby and a bunch of teenagers taking his place.

It’s very odd that the film treats itself like a direct sequel to the first but then minimises the connections. Why not go with entirely new protagonists, like most slasher sequels? Ruby, now called Rachel, was a member of the demented family in the original, having escaped for a new life. She should be the most interesting character. I want to know how she’s acclimated to normal life. I want her return to be about confronting her past and facing her family, now as a new woman. But no, that would be too good and interesting and require too much effort. She’s just another character along for the ride, her backstory largely irrelevant.

The reason for these characters to travel to the desert? Well, Bobby, the reformed Ruby, and the teens have together developed a new fuel for motorbikes that make them go incredibly fast. It’s called Super Formula 2. Of all the reasons to create for why these characters would venture into the desert this has to be the strangest option. It’s such a strained excuse when anything will do. They want to sell drums of this fuel out of the back of a van to gas companies who will be at a bike show. It’s like a plot from Always Sunny or something. But then they miss the show because every single person in the entourage forget about daylight savings time. An example of the film’s overthinking of some aspects then underthinking of others.

Now stuck in the desert, the gang have to contend with the remnants of the murderous family who roam the hills. This, naturally, contradicts the first film. Pluto, despite last seen having his throat ripped out, is now alive and well. Well, I don’t think he’s ever been well but you know what I mean. Pluto is joined by ‘The Reaper’, a new family member who is explained to be Jupiter’s older brother, which makes no sense because the first film explained that everything began with Jupiter. The original film wasn’t the deepest horror story ever told but there were thematic ideas at play to a degree. Two very different family units facing off. There’s no such wider context here. Just a big bad guy hunting some unlucky young adults, the cast made up of actors who seemingly made a career appearing in disappointing sequels. There’s the mayor from Robocop 2 and Peter Frechette from Grease 2.

It’s here where the film’s true laziness is most apparent. It becomes the most stock slasher film I’ve ever seen. Craven isn’t putting his spin on things like he would with Nightmare and later Scream, he’s simply following the tropes. It’s Friday the 13^th in the desert, even stealing the music of that series to score its own scenes. Unfortunately it seems the filmmakers barely had the budget to film death scenes so the kills are fleeting. It’s so incredibly dull. There’s no escalation at all. Two people are killed and the other kids take refuge in a nearby mine, hunkering down and having sex like it’s the start of a horror movie rather than an hour in.

There are also no woods or any place for the Reaper to hide. It’s a blank location, a desert, which doesn’t serve this kind of stalk and slash movie. There’s no hiding, no chasing, no tension of any kind. The Reaper isn’t scary at all. Just a big caveman in a bright desert crushing people with polystyrene rocks. It’s like a bad episode of Star Trek. Meanwhile Pluto doesn’t kill anyone at all; he’s barely threat. All he does is steal one of the bikes with the special fuel. He’s more of a corporate spy than anything. I’d like to see him infiltrate a Silicon Valley tech company. That’s the sequel they should have made.

There is one element of The Hills Have Eyes Part II that had potential: the character of Cass. She’s far and away the best part of the movie. Cass is blind, which makes her a novel character for the genre in this era, and her lack of sight does put a unique spin on things for a couple of scenes. Her stumbling across a kill room, filled with knives and a dead dog hanging up, but not realising it, treating it as just another room, is great. Her having to feel the faces of corpses to tell which of her friends are dead is an unsettling idea, the only effectively horrifying moment to be found.

Overall there’s none of the disturbing grit of the original film. The subgenre has changed to chase a trend. It is fascinating, yet disappointing, to see a franchise shift like this. The Hills Have Eyes goes from a Texas Chainsaw Massacre style film to a sequel that is much more Halloween or Friday the 13^th, even following the sex-equals-death cliché, without having the inherent elements to make that change a successful endeavour. It culminates in a moment of pure laziness and wasted optional that summarises the film’s attitude: Ruby’s death. She should be the star of the film but instead is lamely pushed over and hits her head on a rock. I thought for sure she was just knocked out, ready to return at the very end to save the day. But no. Turns out that bloodless knock had killed her. When a slasher film doesn’t make it clear a character has been murdered, you know something has gone very wrong.