TV Me: The Last Half-Hour of "The Hills Have Eyes"

Dude's way scary...

Warning: this post spoils the ending of "The Hill Have Eyes". If you are lame, read no further!

Last night I caught the last half-hour of "The Hills Have Eyes" on HBO, and the experience was a profound one. Before last night, I knew basically three things about "The Hills Have Eyes", and they are as follows:

1. People are trapped in what looks like the Grand Canyon
2. Mutants are attacking them
3. The hills have motherfucking eyes, man

I don't really know anything about the original "Eyes" (this one is apparently a remake) or the sequel that came out last March, and I'm okay with that. The 30 minutes I caught last night, which I presume made up the climax of the film, were so whacked-out and weird that I feel like I don't need any supplement to them, and that includes the entire beginning of the movie. I was able to piece together a few things: a lot of people have already died at the hands of mutants who sort of look like humans, except all of them have silly disabilities, like a droopy eye or the lack of a neck. They seem to enjoy killing humans, but I assume that they once were humans themselves? And they also seem to be real assholes -- just kind of always laughing sinisterly, or throwing axes at things -- which makes me wonder what this particular group of trapped humans did to them, if anything at all (look, don't actually answer these questions for me, because I don't care, and it's much more fun to guess).

Anyway, when I turned it on, the first thing I saw was a dude wearing glasses breathing really heavily. He seemed to be in a pristine suburban house, his face caked with blood, and he was trying to escape from a mutant who was really, really big, and whose height kept making me wonder why he wasn't spending his time more effectively by joining a mutant basketball team. The mutant was swinging an axe around, and Glasses Guy was running, but he kept falling down, or the mutant kept finding him! Under tables, behind doors... mutant guy just knew where to look! The mutant was about to kill Glasses Guy, but Glasses Guy suddenly drove a spike through mutant's foot, which hurt, and then proceeded to drive the axe into mutant's head, which was crowd-pleasing. Glasses Guy ran out of the house -- to search for a baby. A human baby.

Meanwhile, a teenage boy and a slightly older-looking girl were hanging out near a trailer full of dead bodies. This surprised me, but I soon found out that the dead bodies were their family. They walked away from the trailer for a second, and when they returned, their mom's body was gone! Older-looking girl started crying, while Teenage Boy went out to look for it (?), and told the girl to stay at the trailer (??) He was holding a handgun, which I found odd.

Right around here, there was a rare mutants-only conversation. A young mutant girl with sympathetic eye (the other one was kinda droopin') was taking care of the human baby, but an angry, redneck-looking mutant came into her room with an axe, ready to do some baby-choppin. He told her to get out of the room, and she did -- but not before making the old switcheroo between the baby and a pig (the baby had been under a blanket, for some reason). Needless to say, the redneck mutant was shocked, ugly, and upset, and went to find the little mutant girl with the heart of gold.

Cut to Glasses Guy, who was still looking for human baby, and couldn't find her. I remember him carrying a shotgun around a house that was empty except for a random mutant girl.

Teenage Boy -- oh, how naive you are! He went out to find his mom's body, and he DID find his mom's body -- being eaten by a mutant with a scraggly mutant beard! He got scared, ran away, bearded mutant chased him, Teenage Boy fired a few shots with his gun, and that did nothing. Teenage Boy ran back into the trailer with Slightly Older-Looking Girl, who at one point screamed really, really loudly. Bearded Mutant kept knocking on the trailer, but nobody answered! The boy and girl left the trailer through a window, and the trailer exploded, killing (...re-killing?) Bearded Mutant. Everything was okay.

Finally, FINALLY, Glasses Guy found the human baby, who was given to him by Sympathetic Mutant Girl. Unfortunately, Redneck Mutant had caught up with them, and attacked Glasses Guy. Glasses Guy and Redneck Mutant fought for a little while, before Glasses Guys kicked the shit out of him. GG turned his back... and Redneck Mutant got back up! And was aiming his shotgun at Glasses Guy! Sympathetic Mutant Girl ended up sacrificing herself to save him, making Redneck Mutant miss and fall off a cliff. The eyes of the hill... were officially blinded.

Glasses Guy and Human Baby met up with Teenage Boy and Slightly Older-Looking Girl, who were like, all hugging them. Before the credits rolled, a pair of binoculars were shown watching the reunion, which I guess set up the sequel.

A few thoughts about these 30 minutes:

1. Nothing was exciting or scary, there was just a lot of blood and screaming.
2. I was really, really glad when the humans ended up beating the mutants, but it made me wonder how there was ever a sequel to this. You lost, mutants! Don't you understand??
3. Almost every scene could have been better if "The Hills Have Eyes" had a killer soundtrack. I kept watching the carnage and thinking how cool it would be if, like, Dave Matthews' "Grave Digger" or Maroon 5's "Harder to Breathe" was playing.
4. Seriously, this movie sucks, but I feel like it would have been ten times worse if I had actually known what was specifically happening. Maybe all bad movies should be like that; just skip to the last half-hour, and appreciate the lack of a plot.
5. I wish the sequel had been called "The Hill Have Eyes 2: Now They Have Contact Lenses!"