content warning: violence against women, sexual assault

The Hills Have Eyes is writer/director Wes Craven’s second horror film, preceded by The Last House on the Left. Again, he establishes an outsider versus insider mentality, expanding his focus from two young women going to a rock concert to an entire extended family traveling cross country to California. The approach to the stories is the same: after a horrific act of violence, the survivors attempt to fight back against their unhinged assailants in an unforgiving environment.

The expansive desert setting and larger cast of The Hills Have Eyes sadly lose some of their efficacy in context. Tobe Hooper’s similar outsider family tracking travelers for food film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was not only released to theaters earlier, it took a much more extreme approach to the concept with a more memorable family of monsters. None of the mutants living on the military testing site have the immediate impact of Leatherface. The warning beacon at the gas station, car accident, and early cat and mouse game aren’t nearly as good, either.

What Craven’s effort excels at is actually establishing the victim family as likable characters. They might be foolish to drive into a military testing site in search of a silver mine they’re point blank told doesn’t exist, but they’re never grating or obnoxious. The extended Carter/Wood family is as American as apple pie and just as sweet. Their German Shepherds are loyal defenders and it’s really not hard to see why. This family is kind, caring, affectionate, and a lot of fun. It’s a shame they get trapped in a nightmare situation like The Hills Have Eyes.

What’s remarkable about the film is how many of Wes Craven’s more recognizable images and themes are present so early in his career. The Hills Have Eyes is worth watching just for when darkness falls 30 minutes into the film. The use of light, misdirection, and careful framing used to such great effect in A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Serpent and the Rainbow are already fully formed. Believe it or not, he actually recycles his haunting use of fog in Nancy Thompson’s dreams from an early chase sequence at a gas station in The Hills Have Eyes.

Indeed, The Hills Have Eyes works best in these action sequences. The greatest flaw in any of them is reusing some of the graphic sexual violence in The Last House on the Left just because it got a reaction out of audiences five years before. The rest of the action—stalking scenes with the dogs, the mutant family tag-teaming solitary targets in unfamiliar settings, disorienting chases up and down unstable mountains—is disturbing and suspenseful. Essentially, Craven’s best moments in the film come from experimentation. It’s a level of risk he continued to expand on throughout his career.

The Hills Have Eyes is far from a perfect horror film. The pacing is uneven, the villains bland, and the plot scattered. Hidden among these flaws are enough scares to make this a worthwhile viewing.

The Hills Have Eyes is available to stream on Shudder and Kanopy.