Editorials
Examining the Nuclear Family in ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ (2006)
What is it about The Hills Have Eyes (2006) that’s so appealing? And what makes it “a perfect remake” in my eyes? 2006 was not a great time in America; even a foreign filmmaker could see that. America thrust itself into a false war for oil, under the guise of fighting terrorism, and the housing market was on the verge of its collapse. The Hills Have Eyes, and many of the reboots of this time took that anger many people felt and funneled that into the antagonists of some of our most beloved franchises. The antagonists in the original film were unquestionably bad people, but it’s the family in the reboot that feels even crueler and bloodthirsty. You see this in Michael Bay’s Texas Chainsaw, with Leatherface somehow being crueler and ominous. Hell, even Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers is a hulking, terrifying creature, much more than Carpenter’s original (don’t kill me). Seeing good ultimately besting this seemingly unbeatable evil brought a level of hope to some people who felt they had no other escape. Beauty dies at the beginning of the film and by the time Doug walks out of the canyon with Catherine in his arms, he’s guided out by Beast. I think the anger felt in the films of this time spoke with a world that was full of so much of it.
When you think of mid-aughts remakes or reboots what comes to mind? Halloween? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? House of Wax? When I’m asked about remakes, one film always comes to mind immediately: The Hills Have Eyes. Critically mixed and financially successful, The Hills Have Eyes fell into the laps of horror fans amidst a barrage of remakes and reboots throughout the mid-aughts. Films like The Ring and The Grudge had proven remakes could be insanely financially successful, especially during October. What’s really interesting about the trend of mid-aughts remakes is how it didn’t start in the 2000s. Instead, it began in the year 1999.
In a move that would be copied by Michael Bay just a few years later, Academy Award Winner Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver created Dark Castle Entertainment. Dark Castle’s goal was to remake the films of genre icon William Castle. Little did they know they would start a trend to define an entire decade of horror. The first film from Dark Castle was House on Haunted Hill. The incredibly frightening remake would shoot to the number one spot at the box office upon its October release, grossing $15,946,032 in its opening weekend, setting a financial precedent on the validity of a new wave of remakes. Just three years later The Ring would not be able to beat Haunted Hill, with its $15,015,393 opening weekend. However, we can’t forget The Ring grossed a worldwide total of $249,348,933.
A String of Remakes Brings Us to The Hills
One year later, Michael Bay’s studio Platinum Dunes would try its hand at genre remakes with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This was when people realized remakes could be financially successful on IP alone as TCM made a whopping $10 million on opening day and a jaw-dropping $29 million on its opening weekend, despite overwhelmingly negative reviews. Finally, the fuel that catalyzed the aught’s remakes came from The Grudge. The Grudge had an opening weekend of $39,128,715, with a worldwide gross of $187 million! The rest of the 2000s would see the remakes of films like The Amityville Horror, Halloween, House of Wax, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Cut to 2006. Upon hearing of the financial success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, Wes Craven had an itch to bring one of his properties back. Instead of resurrecting his most successful franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street, he decided his cult-favorite The Hills Have Eyes would be the perfect film to reboot. The 1977 release of The Hills Have Eyes was indeed a financial success, despite what producer Peter Locke would like to think. By October 1977, the film had made around $2 million, adjusted to almost $10 million today, on its budget of $350k to $700k. By the end of its theatrical run, it would make an incredible $25 million, adjusted for over $100 million. Okay, no more money talk. But that’s pretty impressive, no?
Alexandre Aja and the New French Extremity Influence
Wes Craven’s producing partner Marianne Maddalena introduced him to the New French Extremity film High Tension. Craven was impressed. After a meeting with Alexandre Aja, and his collaborator Grégory Levasseur, Wes Craven knew who would reboot his bloody desert story. Receiving mixed reviews, The Hills Have Eyes opened at third in the box office in March. Its run at the box office would gross 70 million dollars, absolutely eclipsing its $15 million dollar budget. And that is the story of what I would describe as, how the perfect reboot came to be. But what is it about this film that I, and many fans, love so much?
The Hills Have Eyes follows a family, well technically two families, on a road trip for their parent’s anniversary. We have Big Bob Carter (Ted Levine), his wife Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), his daughters Brenda (Emilie de Ravin) and Lynn Carter-Bukowski (Vinessa Shaw), his son Bobby (Dan Byrd), Lynn’s husband Doug (Aaron Stanford), and Lynn and Doug’s baby Catherine (Maisie Camilleri Preziosi). After an accident with their car and camper, they find themselves stuck in the desert. Only they are not alone. In the hills, and over the ridge, reside a family of cannibal mutants led by Papa Jupiter (Billy Drago) and his children Lizard (Robert Joy), Big Brain (Desmond Askew), Goggle (Ezra Buzzington), Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith), Ruby (Laura Ortiz), Big Mama (Ivana Turchetto), Cyst (Greg Nicotero), Venus (Judith Jane Vallette), and Mercury (Adam Perrell).
Social Commentary in The Hills Have Eyes Remake
The original and the remake offer a few pieces of commentary, one being a hellish rebuke of class warfare, the haves and the have-nots. Where the remake becomes a lot more interesting than the original is who wrote and directed it. Having Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur on board for a film like this is almost the perfect match. They are no stranger to ultra-violence and political commentary. Stepping out of the shadow of their film about repressed sexuality and mental health, Aja and Lavasseur tell a tale that feels deeply American, even if the filmmakers are French. The script holds a mirror up to us and shows how much of the world sees Americans and how we treat the less fortunate. It’s even more true now than ever. Within a one-block vicinity of Penn Station, you’ll find a plethora of unhoused people the system has seemingly given up on. They’re demonized for the position they’re put in due to countless governmental failings and lack of genuine assistance.
The antagonists in The Hills Have Eyes find themselves forgotten by the world after a set of nuclear tests scourged their homes. What was once a thriving mining town is now a barren wasteland of a forgotten time. Now yes, they are cannibals and killers, but one can’t help but understand their ends are caused by the means. Like the original film, they’re not just cannibals, as The Carters’s dog Beauty is eaten in both films. The cannibal family has most likely hunted their respective land to near extinction, especially due to the size of some of the sons; they’re massive!
Creature Design: Inspired by Real-Life Tragedies
Cannibalism aside, the family looks quite gnarly. KNB EFX handled the arduous 6-month creature design process. However, it goes to show how much passion Aja and Lavasseur had as they had already visually conceived the creatures quite thoroughly. Their inspirations for the designs were based on real-life documentation of the fallout from places like Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Papa Jupiter and Big Mama are presumably the heads of the family. They don’t have any deformities, so we can assume their spawn were either hit from a very young age with large doses of radiation that affected their growth or the radiation received by Papa Jupiter and Big Mama affected their reproductive systems in a way that created their deformities. Part of me wants to believe that while Papa and Mama are the ring leaders, Big Brain is the logistics guy.
We do see humanity within the cannibal family from Ruby. What is Ruby’s role? Initially, we are introduced to Jeb (Tom Bower), the gas station owner. Ruby is seen bringing him a bag of goodies taken from previous victims. Jeb tells Ruby he’s out, and Ruby, who finds herself at the same crossroads, realizes there’s possibly a way out for her. When Bobby gets knocked out, Ruby makes sure he is safe from Goggle. After Catherine is kidnapped, Doug goes on a death mission to get her back at any cost. Thankfully, Ruby double kidnaps Catherine and tries whisking her away to safety; ultimately causing her brother’s death. The character of Ruby is written incredibly as a tragic antagonist. Thrust into a world of hate and violence, Ruby must overcome a life she’s always known to find her own true happiness. Ruby didn’t ask for this, and she’s determined to end this bloody charade one way or another.
Brutal Additions to the Original The Hills Have Eyes
Most of the remake follows closely to the original story. Still, there are a few grand additions that show just how ruthless the cannibal family is. Papa Jupiter takes advantage of an incredibly intoxicated Jeb, goading into blowing his head off with a shotgun. They also bring back Big Bob’s immolation. But the updated version of the fight between Pluto and Doug is probably the most memorable scene in the film. Their fight spans multiple rooms where Pluto has the upper hand most of the time. Pluto reveals either partial analgesia or a very low pain threshold when Doug stabs him in the stomach with a broken bat, it’s one heck of a stab. At some point later in the fight, Doug stabs Pluto in the foot with a screwdriver, and Pluto reacts in pain. The National Library of Medicine states, “Mutations in the voltage-gated sodium channels SCN9A and SCN11A can cause congenital painlessness.” So it’s not too far off to think some of the cannibals could have lessened pain receptors. Doug eventually bests Pluto in their fight, symbolically, piercing Pluto’s throat with a miniature American flag, and finishing him off with an axe to the head.
Pluto may be the most physically intimidating family member, but Lizard seems to be the most vile family member from what we see. Earlier it was mentioned that Jeb would get rewarded with goodies from victims. That’s because he provided them. Jeb sends The Carters down the “shortcut” because he felt he was being made fun of. Once they’re a significant distance away from the gas station, Lizard uses his spike strip whip to pop the tires on the truck. Later in the camper, when Big Bob is on fire Lizard bites the head off of one of The Carters’s birds, drinks its blood, then rapes Brenda. There’s finally some comeuppance for Lizard during a fight with Doug, when Ruby runs and tackles him off the cliff, killing both of them. This gives Ruby her chance to do something good and thin out the family’s numbers even further. By the film’s end, the only cannibal family members we know are still alive are Big Mama and the two children, Venus and Mercury, as Beast kills Big Brain earlier.
Cinematography and Visual Craftsmanship
Grégory Levasseur would not be the only person from High Tension to join Alexandre Aja on this project, they would also bring along cinematographer Maxime Alexandre. Frequent collaboration between brilliant minds yields the best results. Minute details do wonders to visually set The Hills Have Eyes apart from other films of the time. Messing with frame rates wasn’t new by any means, and films like The Ring and The Grudge even played around with them a bit. But it’s how the image was meticulously crafted in each scene, and whatever frame rate fit that exact emotion was used. Like when Doug enters the town, the frame rate is turned way up to give us a constant feeling of anxiety and pressure, only to then be brought back down, and immediately raised again for the Pluto fight. It’s small and easily overlooked, but it adds so much to the tone.
Why The Hills Have Eyes (2006) Is the Perfect Remake
What is it about The Hills Have Eyes (2006) that’s so appealing? And what makes it “a perfect remake” in my eyes? 2006 was not a great time in America; even a foreign filmmaker could see that. America thrust itself into a false war for oil, under the guise of fighting terrorism, and the housing market was on the verge of its collapse. The Hills Have Eyes, and many of the reboots of this time took that anger many people felt and funneled that into the antagonists of some of our most beloved franchises. The antagonists in the original film were unquestionably bad people, but it’s the family in the reboot that feels even crueler and bloodthirsty.
You see this in Michael Bay’s Texas Chainsaw, with Leatherface somehow being crueler and ominous. Hell, even Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers is a hulking, terrifying creature, much more than Carpenter’s original (don’t kill me). Seeing good ultimately besting this seemingly unbeatable evil brought a level of hope to some people who felt they had no other escape. Beauty dies at the beginning of the film and by the time Doug walks out of the canyon with Catherine in his arms, he’s guided out by Beast. I think the anger felt in the films of this time spoke with a world that was full of so much of it.
The Hills Have Eyes Is A Faithful Yet Innovative Reboot
And why do I think this is the perfect reboot? Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur understood the assignment. They recognized what fans loved about the original film and kept the bones while making it their own. The additions to the story do nothing to take away from the core concept that Craven had in mind with his film. The Hills Have Eyes is a politically poignant film that can still be viewed as just a film. There is a message there, but it doesn’t overtake the film in an over-the-top way. When I watch a remake of a film I love, I want to see the aspects of what initially drew me into it, and I want to see the story told in a new way. That is exactly what Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur did.
That can’t be said for The Hills Have Eyes 2.
When I begin crafting my reviews, I do some quick background research on the film itself, but I avoid looking at what others have to say. The last thing I want is for my views to be swayed in any way by what others think or say about a film. It has been at least 13 years since I’ve seen the English-language shot-for-shot remake of Funny Games. And I didn’t remember much about it. After watching the original 1997 masterpiece just minutes ago, I quickly ran to my computer to start writing this. Whether or not I’m breaking new ground by saying this is up in the air, and I could even be very incorrect with this: Funny Games is the perfect foil to Scream, and the irreparable damage it has caused to the slasher subgenre.
The Family at the Center of this Film
Funny Games follows the upper-class family of Anna (Susanne Lothar), George (Ulrich Mühe), son Georgie (Stefan Clapczynski), and dog Rolfi (Rolfi?), who arrive at their lake house for a few weeks of undisturbed peace. Soon after their arrival, they’re met by Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering), two white-clad yuppies who seem just a bit off. Who will survive and who will die in this game that is less funny than the title suggests?
I’ve made this statement about Scream time and time again. Before I get into it too much, let’s take a quick step back to ward off the Ryan C. Showers-like people. I love Scream (as well as 2, 5, and 6). It created a new wave of filmmakers and singlehandedly brought the slasher subgenre back from the dead like a Resident Evil zombie. Like what Tarantino did to independent crime thrillers of the 2000s and 10s, Scream has done to slashers. Post-Scream, slashers felt the need to be overtly meta and as twisty as possible, even at the film’s own demise. There is nothing wrong with a slasher film attempting to be smart. The problem arises when filmmakers who can’t pull it off think they can.
Is Funny Games Anti-Horror or Anti-Slasher?
The barebones rumblings I’ve heard about Funny Games over the years are that writer/director Michael Haneke calls it anti-horror. I would posit that Funny Games unknowingly found itself as more of an anti-slasher rather than an anti-horror. (Hell, it could be both!) Scream would release to acclaim just one year before Haneke’s incredible creation, so I can’t definitively say that Funny Games is a direct response to Scream, as much as I would like to.
Meta-ness has existed in cinema and art long before Scream came to be. Though if you had asked me when I was a freshman in high school, I would have told you Wes Craven created the idea of being meta. It just strikes me as a bit odd that two incredibly meta horror films would be released just one year apart and have such an impact on the genre. Whereas Scream uses its meta nature to make the audience do the Leonardo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… meme, Haneke uses it as a mirror for the audience.
Scream vs. Funny Games: A Clash of Meta Intentions
Scream doesn’t ask the audience to figure out which killer is behind the mask at which points; it just assumes that you will suspend your disbelief enough to accept it. Funny Games subverts this idea by showing you the perpetrators immediately and then forcing you to sit in the same room with them, faces uncovered, for nearly the film’s entire runtime. Scream was flashy and fun, Funny Games is long and uncomfortable. Haneke forces the audience to sit with the atrocities and exist within the trauma felt by the family as they’re brutally picked off one by one.
Funny Games utilizes fourth wall breaks to wink at the audience. Haneke is, more or less, trying to make the audience feel bad for what they’re watching. Each time Paul looks at the camera, it’s almost as if he’s saying, “You wanted this.” One of the most intriguing moments in the film is when Peter gets killed and Paul says, “Where is the remote?” before grabbing it, pressing rewind, and going back moments before Anna kills Peter. This is a direct middle finger to the audience. You think you’re getting a final girl in this nasty picture? Hell no. You asked for this, so you’re getting this.
A Contemptuous Look at Slasher Tropes
Both Funny Games are the only Haneke films I’ve seen, so I can’t speak much on his oeuvre. But Funny Games almost feels contemptful about horror, slashers in particular. The direct nature of the boys and their constant presence in each scene eliminates any potential plot holes. E.g., how did Jason Voorhees get from one side of the lake to a cabin a quarter of a mile away? You just have to believe! In horror, we’ve come to accept that when you’re watching a slasher film, you MUST accept what’s given to you. Haneke proves it can be done simply and effectively.
Whether you think it’s horror or not, Funny Games is one of the greatest horror films of all time. Before the elevated horror craze that exists to inflict misery on the viewers, Haneke had “been there, done that.” When [spoiler] dies, [spoiler] and [spoiler] sit in the living room in silence for nearly two minutes in a single uncut shot. Then, in the same uncut shot, [spoiler] starts keening for another two or three minutes. Nearly every slasher film moves on after a kill. Occasionally, we’ll get a funeral service or a memorial set up at the local high school for the slain teenagers. But there’s rarely an effective reflection on the loss of life in a slasher film. Funny Games tells you that you will reflect on death because you asked for death. You bought the ticket (rented the film), so you must reap what you sow.
Why Funny Games Remains One-of-a-Kind
This piece has been overly harsh on slasher films, and that was not the intention. Behind found footage, slasher films are probably my second favorite subgenre. As someone who has watched their fair share of them, it’s easy to see the pre-Scream and post-Scream shift. But there’s this weird disconnect where slasher films had transformed from commentary on life and loss to nothing more than flashy kills where a clown saws a woman from crotch to cranium, and then refuses to pay her fairly. Funny Games is an impressive meditation on horror and horror audiences. Even the title is a poke at the absurdity of slashers. If you haven’t seen Funny Games, I highly suggest checking it out because I can promise you, you’ve never seen a horror film like it. And we probably never will again.
As a horror fan, I tend to think about remakes a lot. Not why they are made, necessarily. That answer is pretty clear: money. But something closer to “if they have to be made, how can they be made well?” It’s rare to find a remake that is generally considered to be better than the original. However, there are plenty that have been deemed to be valuable in a different way. You can find these in basically all subgenres. Sci-fi, for instance (The Thing, The Blob). Zombies (Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead). Even slashers (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, My Bloody Valentine). However, when it comes to haunted house remakes, only The Woman in Black truly stands out, and it is shockingly underrated. Even more intriguingly, it is demonstrably better than the original movie.
The Original Haunted House Movie Is Almost Always Better
Now please note, I’m specifically talking about movies with haunted houses, rather than ghost movies in general. We wouldn’t want to be bringing The Ring into this conversation. That’s not fair to anyone.
Plenty of haunted house movies are minted classics, and as such, the subgenre has gotten its fair share of remakes. These are, almost unilaterally, some of the most-panned movies in a format that attracts bad reviews like honey attracts flies.
You’ve got 2005’s The Amityville Horror (a CGI-heavy slog briefly buoyed by a shirtless, possessed Ryan Reynolds). That same year’s Dark Water (one of many inert remakes of Asian horror films to come from that era). 1999’s The House on Haunted Hill (a manic, incoherent effort that millennial nostalgia has perhaps been too kind to). That same year there was The Haunting (a manic, incoherent effort that didn’t even earn nostalgia in the first place). And 2015’s Poltergeist (Remember this movie? Don’t you wish you didn’t?). And while I could accept arguments about 2001’s THIR13EN Ghosts, it’s hard to compete with a William Castle classic.
The Problem with Haunted House Remakes
Generally, I think haunted house remakes fail so often because of remakes’ compulsive obsession with updating the material. They throw in state-of-the-art special effects, the hottest stars of the era, and big set piece action sequences. Like, did House on Haunted Hill need to open with that weird roller coaster scene? Of course it didn’t.
However, when it comes to haunted house movies, bigger does not always mean better. They tend to be at their best when they are about ordinary people experiencing heightened versions of normal domestic fears. Bumps in the night, unexplained shadows, and the like. Maybe even some glowing eyes or a floating child. That’s all fine and dandy. But once you have a giant stone lion decapitating Owen Wilson, things have perhaps gone a bit off the rails.
The One Big Exception is The Woman in Black
The one undeniable exception to the haunted house remake rule is 2012’s The Woman in Black. If we want to split hairs, it’s technically the second adaptation of the Susan Hill novel of the same name. But The Haunting was technically a Shirley Jackson re-adaptation, and that still counts as a remake, so this does too.
The novel follows a young solicitor being haunted when handling a client’s estate at the secluded Eel Marsh House. The property was first adapted into a 1989 TV movie starring Adrian Rawlings, and it was ripe for a remake. In spite of having at least one majorly eerie scene, the 1989 movie is in fact too simple and small-scale. It is too invested in the humdrum realities of country life to have much time to be scary. Plus, it boasts a small screen budget and a distinctly “British television” sense of production design. Eel Marsh basically looks like any old English house, with whitewashed walls and a bland exterior.
Therefore, the “bigger is better” mentality of horror remakes took The Woman in Black to the exact level it needed.
The Woman in Black 2012 Makes Some Great Choices
2012’s The Woman in Black deserves an enormous amount of credit for carrying the remake mantle superbly well. By following a more sedate original, it reaches the exact pitch it needs in order to craft a perfect haunted house story. Most appropriately, the design of Eel Marsh House and its environs are gloriously excessive. While they don’t stretch the bounds of reality into sheer impossibility, they completely turn the original movie on its head.
Eel Marsh is now, as it should be, a decaying, rambling pile where every corner might hide deadly secrets. It’d be scary even if there wasn’t a ghost inside it, if only because it might contain copious black mold. Then you add the marshy grounds choked in horror movie fog. And then there’s the winding, muddy road that gets lost in the tide and feels downright purgatorial. Finally, you have a proper damn setting for a haunted house movie that plumbs the wicked secrets of the wealthy.
Why The Woman in Black Remake Is an Underrated Horror Gem
While 2012’s The Woman in Black is certainly underrated as a remake, I think it is even more underrated as a haunted house movie. For one thing, it is one of the best examples of the pre-Conjuring jump-scare horror movie done right. And if you’ve read my work for any amount of time, you know how positively I feel about jump scares. The Woman in Black offers a delectable combo platter of shocks designed to keep you on your toes. For example, there are plenty of patient shots that wait for you to notice the creepy thing in the background. But there are also a number of short sharp shocks that remain tremendously effective.
That is not to say that the movie is perfect. They did slightly overstep with their “bigger is better” move to cast Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role. It was a big swing making his first post-Potter role that of a single father with a four-year-old kid. It’s a bit much to have asked 2012 audiences to swallow, though it reads slightly better so many years later.
However, despite its flaws, The Woman in Black remake is demonstrably better than the original. In nearly every conceivable way. It’s pure Hammer Films confection, as opposed to a television drama without an ounce of oomph.
Is ‘Funny Games’ The Perfect ‘Scream’ Foil?
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2025: The Creep Tapes Season 2
The Horror Press Podcast Ep 51: Frankenstein & Stranger Things
‘Frankenstein’ Review: Guillermo Del Toro Is Off to the Races
‘The Siege of Ape Canyon’ Review: Bigfoot Comes Home
The Best Horror You Can Stream on Shudder in November 2025
‘The Addams Family’ (1991) First-Time Watch Review
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2025: ‘Slayed’ LGBTQ+ Shorts Block
Brooklyn Horror Film Fest 2025: ‘CAMP’ Review
Brooklyn Horror Film Fest 2025: ‘The Serpent’s Skin’ Review
‘The People Under the Stairs’ Review: A Brilliantly Bizarre Undercover Horror Classic
Slappy Was the Blueprint: How the Dummy from Goosebumps Became A Horror Icon
Glen and Glenda: Don Mancini’s Reverence for Queerness in ‘Seed of Chucky’ (2004)
‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ and The Story of William Afton Explained
‘Truth or Dare’: Who Did it Best?
The 11 Most Disturbing Horror Movies Ever, According to an Actual Horror Fan
V/H/S Franchise Ranked, Best to Worst
Everything You Need to Know About Jason Voorhees
[REVIEW] ‘Cherry Falls’ (1999) Brittany Murphy Shines in This Cult Classic Slasher
