The Hills Have Eyes 2

Review in a Hurry:  Remember those eyes? The ones in the hills? They're still there, and they still belong to bloodthirsty psycho-mutants who'll gladly stalk and disembowel trespassers, one by one, for predictably grisly popcorn-schlock thrills.

The Bigger Picture:  It has only been a year since producer and horror flick patriarch Wes Craven brought forth a slick, modern remake of his own 1977 creep show, The Hills Have Eyes. This hurry-up sequel delivers the same brand of paranoid, blood-covered, barely clinging-to-an-R-rating action as in '06, featuring a similar pack of desert-dwelling super freaks who wreak murderous havoc on unsuspecting visitors.

Last time out, the victims in this MTV-styled gallery of gore were members of a fairly ordinary Ohio family on a cross-country road trip—everyday civilians whose terror we could relate to pretty easily. This time, it's a squad of underprepared National Guard rookies who stumble into the hills on a would-be rescue mission, only to wind up screaming, bawling, bleeding and dying, in no particular order.

The fact that the film's deformed kill-billies can take down trained military types may make them slightly more ominous, but it also stifles our empathy as the body count climbs. They enlisted, right?

But if you so much as check the local listings for this thing, it means you have an appetite for graphic slash-and-thrash set pieces, and director Martin Weisz earns his passing grade with a quota of effective (if unoriginal) frights.

The makeup and CGI effects are on the money, and if you like testing your shock threshold, step right up for scenes of rape, torture and unholy mutant childbirth. For all its hackneyed "look behind you!" moments and anemic plotting, it's a suitable addition to the Craven catalog.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  We're not saying Hills 2 makes anything close to a political statement, but it does aim for a touch of topicality: Fellow grunts Crank and Napoleon clash over their opposing views on the war in Iraq, ultimately setting aside their differences to go scooters with paralyzing fear.