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I had high hopes for Alexandre Aja's second film. Haute Tension is one of my favourite slasher films, and is an effectively tense and stylish debut. When I heard that Aja was remaking Wes Craven's "when cannibal families attack" horror The Hills Have Eyes, I was excited. The source material had sufficient potential for Aja to create something genuinely unsettling. Reports of the film being shockingly violent, deeply disturbing, and far too extreme for the MPAA only convinced me further that Aja's second film would be something special.

I couldn't have been more wrong. Aja has turned in a deeply unimaginative remake of Craven's original, which lacks most of the tension and atmosphere of its predecessor, and instead attempts to join the bandwagon of recent 70s style slasher movies. The first half of the film mirrors the original with disappointing accuracy; Aja has borrowed most of the lines from the original, and his only additions are either confusing and underdeveloped (the suggestion that elder sister Lynne sells pot, the suggestion that Lynne's husband, Doug, actually fancies younger sister, Brenda) or serve to turn the audience against characters we should be building a relationship with (Doug's bravado whilst trying to appear cool in front of younger brother Bobby). Aja turns Craven's sympathetic gas station owner into a lecherous, unpleasant Renfield-alike who sends the family off to their demise, one of several changes to Craven's script which make the film far less interesting.

After the attack on the family's motor-home, Aja ventures off into new territory. I had hoped that it would be at this point that he made the film his own, but a series of fairly gormless events stack up to a second half which bemuses far more than it entertains. Why would our heroes split up, leaving Doug to venture off into the heart of mutant-ville armed only with a baseball bat, when a gun and ammo are available and left with the other family members? Why would an elaborate trap involving gas cannisters and matches be constructed, when said gun currently has a clip and a half of ammo left in it? How do our mutant friends keep the generator running? What is the Toxic Avenger up to these days? It's an annoyingly brainless script, which didn't have me rooting for our supposed heroes. Aja doesn't even manage to convey Craven's "survivors become animals" message, opting instead for an attempt at a heroic portrayal of a family in danger.

The location looks like some sort of abandoned quarry, rather than the US desert. I'm told the film was shot in Morocco but the result is simply the wrong look for a film that's supposed to believably take place in America. Aja's attempts at political undertones don't work either; heavy handed lines about Democrats and Republicans are simply more crappy lines of dialogue that aren't needed. The cheesy opening sequence is a similarly pointless attempt at a political message ("nuclear testing is bad, look, it creates homicidal mutants that will eat your children!"). The soundtrack is a bit of a problem too, attempting to generate some sort of unease by producing cyclic, industrial crunches and squeals. If your script doesn't do it, maybe your soundtrack can? Not here.

As for the gore, there's little here that hasn't been seen before. The amputation of fingers is less effective here than in the other (far better) recent slasher film Wolf Creek. The embedding of axes in heads doesn't actually feel terribly unpleasant (see the original Dawn of the Dead for an example of how this should be done), and the gratuitous gunshot to the head feels just that: gratuitous. An over the top attempt at shockery, relying on an abundance of ketchup to keep the audience firmly in a state of horror. It appears to be working wonders with the teen audience, or those who are unfamiliar with Craven's original work and are looking for an entertaining exploitation style horror film to see, but for horror aficionados, there's very little to recommend or get excited about here.

I'd hoped this remake would have more in common with the Night of the Living Dead, and Dawn remakes - use the viewers preconceptions about the plot against them, up the ante, and give them something they've not seen before. The Hills Have Eyes is a competent remake of a film I'd previously underrated, and now have greater respect for, but Alexandre Aja has given us something so reliant on stylised unpleasantness, and so lacking in any believable or likeable plot or characters, that it ultimately fails to be a good film in its own right.