“The Hills Have Eyes” Cast Interviews

Although The Hills Have Eyes is a remake of a nearly 30-year-old Wes Craven film - and one that’s been imitated many times over - this version, under the cleaver sharp command of French auteur Alexandre Aja, feels as fresh as rotten meat. The story opens in the vast, hot, merciless desert. Plunk in the middle of nowhere is a typical family headed for California to celebrate mom and dad’s Silver wedding anniversary.

Bob (Ted Levine) and Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), wed for 25 years, have their three children along for the ride — bickering younger siblings Bobby Jr. (Dan Byrd) and Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), and newlywed Lynn (Vinessa Shaw). Lynn’s husband Doug (Aaron Stanford), their infant daughter Catherine (Maisie Camilleri Preziosi), and two dogs, Beauty and Beast, round out the family portrait.

They stop for gas, and are given directions by the way-too-creepy attendant for a shortcut through the desert.

Needless to say, it’s a trap and the family is soon at the mercy of the ultimate nuclear family. The most dangerous of the distorted cannibals are Lizard (Robert Joy), Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith), Jupiter (Billy Drago), and Goggle (Ezra Buzzington).

In case you are wondering, the breast-feeding scene from the original is still in. Shaw was stoic about it as she could be, but the reason she took the movie was “because of Alex and Greg (Levasseur).

“I had never seen a horror movie like High Tension before,” she says. “I was drawn in. I was surprised, because I saw it in during the middle of the day with the lights on. I wasn’t to the point where… I can’t watch this anymore. But it was scary. [I decided to do Hills] because of the characters and their relationships. At the end of that movie it was heartbreaking. It was real people you connect to and you are part of this family that starts getting killed. Lynn has to be heroic. There are ten million things going on in her mind in that one scene.

“I have [worked with] blood in other movies. I’ve died before. But this was tantamount to all of that. It was horrific with the breast feeding and (spoiler alert) the gunshot. There was so much blood on the floor I was sticking to the floor. My hair was matted to the ground. There was a lot going on in that scene just makeup-wise. You feel exhausted. I could feel Robert Joy’s breath and everything. It was intense. It was a day and a half of that.”

Not only was there hot breath, but hot winds on the exteriors in Morocco, which doubled for the U.S. deserts - Byrd says it helped his performance. “It was good, because of the remoteness of the location. It was better than doing a movie like that on a soundstage, because you really are in those elements. It really is 120 degrees - you don’t have to ‘act’ that.”

On shooting the interior scenes in the trailer, where de Ravin’s character Brenda is raped by a mutant and she witnesses the death of her family members, “It took a toll me,” de Ravin admits. “It kind of sneaks up on you. You feel different about yourself, and you don’t know why. Horrible things go through your mind.” Luckily, she says, “Alex kept things very lighthearted.”

“We were definitely humor-based,” Shaw agrees.

“Too many songs in our heads, too many dance parties on our minds.” And, unlike some film productions, the “good guys” and “bad guys” were not asked to keep their distance from each other. Everyone on the set was friendly off-camera.

Stanford, who plays Shaw’s husband in the movie, says he drew inspiration not from the original The Hills Have Eyes, but from other 1970s movies. Aja told him to watch Straw Dogs and Deliverance in preparation for playing Doug. “The character’s arc is similar to Dustin Hoffman’s in Straw Dogs,” he says. “That sounds pretty lofty. But it is similar.”

Even though Doug is sort of an outsider because he’s married into this family, he says “You have to believe that he does deeply love his in-laws.”

But does he love his dog? That’s a bone of contention. Apparently, some viewers (spoiler alert) had a problem with Doug not going back to save his dog, Beast, from the mutants. “It’s just real,” Aja insists. “Who is going to come back to help the dog to survive? You are here to save your baby. You are here to bring back the baby. We had this conversation with the producers. ‘You have to go back and save the dog,’ they said.” But Aja’s realistic approach won out.

“That dog was a goddamned hero, and he deserves to be supported!” laughs Stanford. “Everyone’s going to hate him for leaving that dog behind. But it’s real. I asked Alex about it at the time, and he said, ‘You’re a father. Who are you going to save, your baby or your dog?’ It made sense.”

So that may not be a beloved moment in the film. As for his favorite scene in the movie, Stanford doesn’t hesitate: “I love the burned out nuclear village. We shot the big fight sequence for five days in that mythical wonderland of horror.”

de Ravin, who actually goes through some of the most harrowing things in the movie, gets a lot of horror scripts (she was in the direct-to-DVD slasher last year, Santa’s Slay, and she was also in the TV remake of Carrie — “It was fun playing the bitch!” she says). But “Hills Have Eyes is not your typical horror movie.” She liked the message of it, and how it was a study of two families, two societies. The killings “are not personal. The Carters represent society, and the mutants want their revenge. Who is the bad person in this film? You feel sorry for both families.”

Also, the fact that it was based on a true story (the Sawney Beane Family in the 1700s) was important to de Ravin. “That makes it even more scary,” she says. She isn’t scared of fantasy or sci-fi movies, but this one got her because of the realism.

Shaw is afraid of all kinds of horror movies.

It “sounds cheesy, but I cannot watch horror movies. I avoid them. Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Exorcist… no way. It’s too real for me.”

Byrd says he is not really afraid of anything. “Maybe e-coli,” he laughs. “I live alone. I’m not afraid of the dark, or anything like that.”

Stanford is crazy about zombie movies. “The Dawn of the Dead remake they did recently was great. I loved that.”

de Ravin didn’t see the original Hills Have Eyes. “Alex begged me not to.” She agrees that it was better to go in with a clean slate. Byrd concurs. “I said I didn’t want to [to see the original first and] go in with any preconceived notions, and it’s half true. I don’t think it would have thrown me off too much. Now that I have seen what we have done, I’d like to check out the original.”

The movie has been screened, and so far the reviews from the horror diehards are favorable. Even those who aren’t into horror have been affected, as Shaw can attest: “My dad saw a screening of the movie. I thought I was afraid of horror movies, until I saw his reaction! He’s a therapist, and he deals with trauma all the time. So this movie really got him. When [I died in the movie] he held my hand and went, ‘Awww.’ He’s very affected. My mom hasn’t seen it, but she will at the premiere. And my grandma. I said, ‘Are you guys sure you want to see this?’”

de Ravin is still going strong on the hit TV series Lost, but I jokingly warned and reminded her than when her Lost costar Maggie Grace bowed to bad reviews in the remake of The Fog, she was soon off the show. “Maybe it’s a trend!” de Ravin laughed.

Let’s hope not. The Hills Have Eyes really is a valid update, and an improvement on the original. Be sure and check out my review, and watch the video interviews with the cast and director, and producer Wes Craven.