Some sequels are unnecessary. Some sequels are embarrassing. And then there’s The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007), which manages to be both, plus a masterclass in how to make an audience wish for a swift nuclear detonation just to put everyone involved out of their misery. If Wes and Jonathan Craven thought this script would honor the original legacy, they must have written it during a tequila bender at Burning Man. What we got is a film where the U.S. Army faces mutants, and somehow the mutants come out looking like the smarter species.
The Setup: Because “National Guard vs. Mutants” Totally Sells
The film opens with a woman being forced to breed mutant babies. When she delivers a stillborn, Papa Hades—yes, that’s actually his name—decides she’s unfit for mutant motherhood and kills her. This is the kind of opening scene that screams: Welcome to two hours of suffering.
We then cut to a National Guard squad in training, who are so incompetent that you start rooting for the mutants immediately. These soldiers don’t even have names worth remembering—they have nicknames like Spitter, Crank, Stump, and Barbie. It’s less “elite military unit” and more “Saturday morning cartoon rejects.” They’re sent to Sector 16 in the New Mexico desert to resupply scientists, but instead stumble into a mutant ambush. The soldiers are picked off faster than extras in a low-budget zombie flick, proving once and for all that America’s greatest military weakness is “being in a horror movie sequel.”
The Characters: Darwin Awards in Uniform
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the sheer stupidity of these characters:
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Sarge (Flex Alexander): The leader who dies because of friendly fire. Yes, the squad’s commanding officer is killed by his own men. That sets the tone.
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Spitter: Dies because his rappelling gear is sabotaged, which honestly feels like the universe doing us a favor.
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Stump: Tries to climb down a cliff to escape, promptly eaten alive. The only thing stumpy here is his survival instinct.
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Crank: Tries to steal dynamite, blows himself up. Darwin Award unlocked.
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Napoleon and Amber: The supposed heroes, but their biggest accomplishment is not tripping over their own rifles.
These are soldiers who make Beetle Bailey look like Saving Private Ryan. By the time the mutants drag them into caves, you’re not asking “Will they survive?” You’re asking, “Do they deserve to?”
The Mutants: Discount Halloween Costumes
Now let’s talk about the mutants. In the first film, they were scary—grotesque, violent, believable products of nuclear fallout. In The Hills Have Eyes 2, they look like Spirit Halloween masks left too close to a radiator.
Papa Hades is the ringleader, a big bald guy who spends most of his time screaming and sexually assaulting captives. There’s also Chameleon, who doesn’t so much blend in as just lurk awkwardly. Sniffer, who sniffs (yes, really). And Letch, who looks like he was rejected from a Rob Zombie music video for being “too try-hard.”
These mutants are less terrifying monsters and more like a deformed improv troupe whose only bit is “What if we ate people?”
The Plot: Soldiers vs. Mutants, Audience vs. Sanity
The plot is simple in the same way banging your head against a wall is simple. Soldiers wander into the hills. Mutants kill soldiers. Soldiers get captured. Mutants try to breed with captured women. Repeat until runtime is achieved.
The movie desperately wants to be about survival, but instead it’s about watching characters make increasingly stupid choices until you start sympathizing with the mutants. At least they’re efficient.
By the halfway mark, every scene blends together: someone gets dragged into a hole, someone screams, someone dies in a cave, someone drops a gun. It’s like the script was written by hitting “copy-paste” on a Word document labeled “Generic Horror Death #3.”
The Rape Scene: When Horror Becomes Exploitation
One of the ugliest parts of the film is Missy being kidnapped and raped by Papa Hades. The scene isn’t shocking because it’s scary—it’s shocking because it’s exploitative and lazy. Instead of building tension or horror, the film leans on sexual violence as cheap shorthand for “look how evil the mutants are.” It’s not only tasteless, it’s unimaginative, like the filmmakers ran out of ideas and decided to staple trauma porn into the script.
The Action: Military vs. Pyrotechnics
You’d think a film about soldiers fighting mutants in the desert would at least have decent action. Instead, we get shaky-cam chaos and explosions so random you’d think Michael Bay was ghost-directing from a nearby Taco Bell. Guns misfire, grenades go off in the wrong hands, and dynamite is treated like party poppers. The soldiers supposedly trained for combat can’t even coordinate an ambush against mutants who can barely hold their weapons without drooling on them.
The Ending: Bayonet Ballet
The climax has Napoleon and Amber facing off against Papa Hades in a cave. It ends with them stabbing him to death with a bayonet, which is less “epic showdown” and more “awkward fencing class.” After all the buildup, the big bad mutant is defeated by two rookies who basically luck their way through the fight.
But don’t worry—the film ends with a “mysterious mutant watching the survivors through surveillance equipment,” setting up a sequel that mercifully never happened. At least the hills had the decency to stay quiet after this one.
The Verdict: Hills Have Eyes, Audience Has Headache
The Hills Have Eyes 2 is the kind of sequel that makes you retroactively dislike the first movie for ever inspiring it. It’s dull, exploitative, poorly acted, and paced like a drunk hiker lost in the desert. The only hills with eyes here are the bags under yours after trying to stay awake.
