THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II (1984)
Article 4442 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-6-2014
Directed by Wes Craven
Featuring Tamara Stafford, Kevin Spirtas, John Bloom
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Horror sequel

A group of young people go out in the desert to take part in a bike race. They get stranded and find themselves threatened by mutant maniacs.

I’m not a big fan of the original movie, but at least it generated a certain degree of dread and suspense, and it did a number of things very right. I can’t say the same about this one. For one thing, it manages to make me not care about the fates of all of the characters so quickly that it almost made my head swim. It also throws in stupid fake scares and some truly awful comic relief (the original had none of the latter). It pretty much follows the slasher playbook, and it fails to generate an iota of suspense; even Michael Berryman doesn’t do much for me here. Director and writer Wes Craven seems to be only going through the motions here, and the result is just dismal.