“Lights, Camera, Carnage!”
Every once in a while, a horror movie comes along that makes you grin like a maniac and think, “Wait… was that genius or just insane?” Enter The Hills Run Red (2009), Dave Parker’s blood-soaked love letter to cinematic obsession, daddy issues, and the kind of horror fandom that really should come with a restraining order.
It’s not high art — it’s more like a head-on collision between Scream, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and a film school thesis that went way too far. But that’s exactly what makes it work. It’s unapologetically self-referential, nastily clever, and just demented enough to be fun.
This isn’t your typical slasher flick — it’s a movie about the people who love slasher flicks a little too much. And unlike most of its victims, it knows exactly what it’s doing before the axe comes down.
The Plot: Horror Movie About a Horror Movie About Horrible People
Our protagonist (a term used loosely here) is Tyler, a film student so obsessed with a lost 1980s horror film — The Hills Run Red — that his girlfriend and best friend might as well be background noise. He’s the kind of guy who talks about “auteur theory” while wearing blood-splattered Converse.
The movie-within-the-movie was supposedly directed by Wilson Wyler Concannon (played by William Sadler, looking like he bathes in whiskey and formaldehyde), who disappeared decades ago after his masterpiece was banned for being too disturbing. So naturally, Tyler does what any reasonable horror nerd would do: track down Concannon’s long-lost daughter, who now works as a stripper.
That daughter, Alexa (Sophie Monk, oozing danger and glitter), agrees to take Tyler and his cheating girlfriend Serina on a road trip into the woods to find her father’s cabin — the birthplace of cinematic nightmares. What follows is a bloody spiral of meta-horror, incest, and film geek masochism so gleefully twisted you can practically hear Parker giggling behind the camera.
Babyface: A Slasher Worth the Price of Admission
Every great slasher needs an icon, and The Hills Run Red delivers with Babyface — a lumbering, mute maniac with a stitched-up mask literally sewn into his flesh. Imagine Leatherface after taking an art class in “Trauma 101.”
Babyface isn’t just a killer — he’s a fan. Raised by his incestuous filmmaker dad and his equally deranged sister/mother Alexa (yes, that kind of family), he grows up believing that violence is cinema, and cinema is life. The result? A walking, stabbing commentary on the dangers of mistaking art for meaning.
He’s brutal, efficient, and weirdly sympathetic — like if Frankenstein’s monster got an IMDb account and started murdering critics. Every time he swings his axe, it feels like he’s punishing the audience for liking it.
Sophie Monk: From Pop Star to Psycho Auteur
Let’s be honest — no one expected Sophie Monk, former Popstars alum and general tabloid darling, to deliver one of horror’s most underrated villain performances. But she absolutely owns the role of Alexa Concannon.
She starts as the sexy, damaged daughter of a missing filmmaker and slowly morphs into a full-blown psychotic auteur who literally murders people to make her masterpiece. Move over, Tarantino — Alexa shoots her movies with a chainsaw and edits them in blood.
By the film’s end, she’s reinvented herself as the new generation of horror — cruel, stylish, and unapologetically nihilistic. Watching her sit in the flickering light of a projector while forcing her victims to “appreciate” her work is the kind of high-camp horror bliss you rarely get outside of European cinema and Satanic film school.
Monk’s performance balances seduction, insanity, and pitch-black humor. She’s not just the final twist — she is the twist, the director, the killer, and the critic rolled into one sparkly homicidal package.
William Sadler: Patron Saint of Deranged Dads
Then there’s William Sadler, chewing scenery as Wilson Wyler Concannon — the “lost genius” of horror who took method filmmaking so far he forgot to stop killing his cast. Sadler delivers every line with Shakespearean grandeur, as if he’s aware he’s performing King Lear for an audience of corpses.
His scenes are pure, campy gold. When he reveals his big secret — that Babyface is the product of his own incest with his daughter — he doesn’t just say it; he announces it, like a man proud of his family’s contribution to film history and the police blotter.
Concannon’s motto might as well be: “Real art requires real pain, preferably someone else’s.”
Meta Horror Done Right (and Wrong in All the Right Ways)
The Hills Run Red works best as a sly, self-aware jab at horror fandom itself. Tyler’s obsession with finding “the scariest movie ever made” mirrors the audience’s never-ending hunt for the next shock, the next taboo, the next forbidden frame.
Parker’s film asks, “What happens when we finally find it?” The answer: everyone dies, and it’s fantastic.
It’s the rare slasher that actually understands why people love horror. It doesn’t mock the genre’s tropes — it bathes in them, like a killer luxuriating in the blood of its clichés.
Sure, the dialogue veers into melodrama, and the “found footage” angle is about as subtle as a chainsaw through drywall. But the movie’s sheer commitment to its own madness keeps it alive. Every frame feels like a love letter written in fake blood and bad taste.
Gore, Glamour, and Grindhouse Glory
The kills here are gleefully nasty, rendered with practical effects that ooze with old-school charm. Heads roll, intestines spill, and people are gutted both literally and emotionally.
There’s something perversely fun about the way Parker frames the violence — it’s shocking without being mean-spirited, disgusting without losing its sense of humor. One minute you’re grimacing, the next you’re laughing at the audacity.
It’s not torture porn — it’s torture pop art.
The Ending: Everyone Gets Their Close-Up (and Their Comeuppance)
The finale is pure gonzo brilliance. Tyler, tied to a chair, watches Alexa’s personal cut of The Hills Run Red — a snuff film edited with loving precision — as he bleeds out and laughs himself into oblivion. It’s the perfect meta-ending: the critic dies while watching the movie he helped create.
Then, just when you think it’s over, the mid-credits scene delivers one last grotesque punchline. Serina, still alive and pregnant with Babyface’s child, becomes the unwilling star of Alexa’s next generation of horror. The cycle of exploitation continues, and Alexa croons a lullaby that’s equal parts Rosemary’s Baby and Toddlers & Tiaras.
It’s horrifying, hilarious, and disturbingly poetic.
Verdict: A Love Letter Written in Arterial Spray
The Hills Run Red isn’t perfect — the dialogue sometimes clunks, and the middle stretch sags like a third-act scream queen. But as a meta-horror slasher that skewers both the genre and its audience, it’s wickedly effective.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of a grindhouse mixtape: messy, passionate, and entirely too much fun. For horror fans, it’s a reminder that sometimes the line between “watching” and “participating” in the carnage gets a little blurry — and that’s what makes it so deliciously dangerous.
Grade: A- (for “Axe Murder, Art, and Alexa, Queen of the Carnage”)
It’s bloody, it’s twisted, it’s smarter than it looks — and it’s got Sophie Monk turning incest and snuff into feminist filmmaking. The Hills Run Red doesn’t just celebrate horror. It worships it, smirking all the while.
So grab your popcorn and your sanity (you’ll need both), because this isn’t just a horror film — it’s a horror fan’s midlife crisis captured on camera. And yes, the hills truly run red — with blood, with irony, and with pure, glorious chaos.
