If The Hills Have Eyes '05 derives meaning from nuclear guilt, then The Hills Have Eyes 2 is born out of military regret. Minutes into the film, Buck Private Napoli offers a timid defense of his politics and his CONVERSATION NOT CONFRONTATION bumper sticker: he just doesn't think the President should lie so much. Our representative of the military, Sergeant Millstone (nice solid name), offers a reasonable defense - it's the Prez's job - and we have our basic party lines. Well, our highest-ranking representative available; there was a Colonel recently, but he was speared through the chest and thrown off a cliff.

Our highest-ranking military representative, in turn, will die, and sooner rather than later. Our next de facto commanding officer will get his soon after.

We know from Hills '78/'05 that this lanky leftist, whose moment of compassion just cost his entire squad their lives, is to be our centerpiece. The ne minus ultra of an inept squad, he has the longest possible character arc to violent retaliatory rage. Sarge disregards his mild insistence that his name is Napoli - and so PVT Napoli will henceforth be Napoleon: a great military leader.

(Sarge will also refer to Napoli as Private Pyle, longtime military shorthand for incompetence and naïveté, but in post-1987 cinema, also an optional assaultive nickname for a mind who can't handle it, ref. Full Metal Jacket.)

The Hills Have Eyes films ('78 and '05) are both about the journey from average guy (preferably pacifist) to victim to - well, not aggressor, but something resembling it: to violent defender, maybe, or unhinged, unwilling combatant. Both contain a point at which the beleaguered Doug goes into battle by necessity, but with full knowledge of his actions.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 considers a basic parallel, but doesn't quite have the same dedication. Napoleon can't entirely make up his mind - he starts expectably scared, gradually forced by circumstance to move forward. As leadership figures fall away, he rises to the challenge in baby steps, never really gaining momentum. He's pushed along, his reactions mildly, uselessly intelligent, but never as bright as we should expect from the skinniest, least gung-ho soldier in a squad, badly in need of a chance to prove himself. His Eagle Scout background is solely useful for a single knot. He continues his path not with growing, internalized frustration, but with uncertainty: he backs going into the cave, then favors going after the captured Missy. Later, he pleads with Amber not to go after Missy.

It doesn't matter much, really, because the defining moment for Doug comes at the end; we don't get to see what becomes of him. In 2005, Alexandre Aja recreated Craven's 1977 moment, roughly: the film's climax, at which our former pacifist bludgeons, viciously and uncontrollably, his prostrate opponent.

Nap reaches this point about an hour in.

Then Amber reaches it a bit later. Then Missy reaches it. Then Napoleon reaches it again.

It's not that a single downward bayonet stab is the same as an epic, red-washed freakout, but in a film series where the single key moment is a loss of control accompanied by a repeated bludgeoning of a fully horizontal opponent beneath a once-peaceful victim, a downward stab carries more than just another torsoful of M-16 bullets - and the Cravens and Weisz...

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Topics: horror, movies