The first "The Hills Have Eyes" creeped me out so of course I had to see the second. This time the good guys have guns (in my best southern accent).

A military unit was sent out to the New Mexico desert to bring aid and supplies. Of course, when they get to the seemingly abandoned outpost they run into the rejects of The Toxic Avengers.

I was thinking, "OK now. Now we got some bad mofos with guns, it's about to be on. These circus side show freaks are about to get dealt with military style!" Oh yeah, I was hyped.

Of course there wouldn't be much of a movie then if that happened. After all, these missing links did survive nuclear testing, so what're a few dudes with guns? Prepare for some serious casualties in horrific fashion and more mutant on human violence.

My opinion on the HILLS HAVE EYES films varies. The first one I saw was the modern remake, which blew me away; sure, it told a familiar story of humans battling mutants, but the direction was strong, the violence visceral, and the pacing remarkable. It was a powerful, shocking film. Next up I saw the Craven original and, like a lot of Craven films, it disappointed me. I found it dated, flawed, and a film that paled in comparison next to the remake, which is unusual. My third exposure is the sequel to the remake, which takes the general premise and utterly wastes it on another ALIENS-inspired storyline of a squad of soldiers entering enemy territory and finding themselves getting picked off one by one by the villains.

My biggest beef is that this film has so much wasted potential. Sure, there are outrageous gore effects occurring frequently in the film, but when they happen to uninteresting, uninspired characters, you feel like you're playing a computer game rather than getting involved in a real movie. The biggest disappointment is the script, which is obviously a rush job designed to cash in on the first film's success. Each and every soldier is depicted as either an idiot, a bully, or a thug, and they don't seem to have more than a couple of brain cells between them. Remember, these are the guys we're supposed to root for. Even the victims in a nameless Friday the 13th sequel of the '80s had more characterisation than this!

We end up with a load of people scurrying around in some nondescript cave system, and even that's ripping off THE DESCENT. The acting's poor across the board, and the mutants are laughable rather than the fear-inducing creatures of the first film. I mean, the guy who's got that stony skin...is he really supposed to be menacing? They also die far too easily as well. I suppose one bonus is the short running time, but even that seems padded out to the max, throwing in lots of pointless sequences and leaving genuine sub-plots unfocused and hanging (the friendly mutant, for instance – what's the deal with him? He's like that guy in THE GOONIES, but I want to find out more about him!). This means that the only reason to watch THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 is to see an extended sequence of somebody beating someone else's head in with a rock.

Two years ago, a family stumbled onto Section 16 and some of them are killed. The military tries install monitoring equipment in the area but they are slaughter. A bumbling group of National Guardsmen are sent to support the camp but they find the place abandoned. They see a mirror signal from the top of the hills and they have trouble using their radio. A group is sent up to investigate but the Guardsmen are soon under attack.

If Wes Craven got Emilie de Ravin to return, that would have been at least interesting. The first half is annoyingly stupid. For some reason, the mutants are unable to use guns and yet they keep besting the heavily armed Guardsmen. The Guardsmen keep pointing their guns up in the air when the mutants keep attacking them from right under their feet. They never check properly. Once they fall under ground, the movie does get a little better. It's more believable that mutants could win with hand-to-hand combat in the confined spaces. The claustrophobia adds a little to the horror atmosphere. However it's still never gets that good.