31 Days of Horror – October 3rd – “The Hills Run Red”

If you’re looking for a horror movie that deconstructs horror movies by acknowledging the movie making process, we recommend “Behind the Mask – The Rise of Leslie Vernon“. If you’re looking for a newer, much shittier version of that, you could watch “The Hills Run Red“. But we don’t recommend it.

The main character of “The Hills Run Red“, Tyler, is a horror movie junkie. He is obsessed with the mystery behind an 80s slasher film deemed too gory for public viewing. The movie and the director who made it have since disappeared, and all that’s left is the trailer.  Of course, Tyler sets out to find his Holy Grail, i.e. the original cut of the film. The premise is weak (not to mention not at all scary), so of course the first half of the movie is peppered with over-expository dialogue explaining to us why this is so very important. Next time they should just stick to the gratuitous boob shots and leave the plot to someone who can put together something at least marginally entertaining.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 81 minutes

Directed by: Dave Parker

Written by: John Carchietta, John Dombrow

Starring: William Sadler, Sophie Monk, Tad Hilgenbrink

DVD Release: 09/29/09

Along for the ride are Tyler’s girlfriend, Serina (Janet Montgomery), and his best friend, Lalo (Alex Wyndham). The three also happen to live together, so of course Serina and Lalo bang in one of the first scenes. I’m not sure why that happens so early on in the movie. Usually you’d wait until the audience has a speck of interest in the characters before you have them doing horrible things to one another. Maybe they realized that no one would ever give a rat’s ass about the characters in this movie and decided that it wouldn’t really be a crappy slasher movie without the obligatory, unnecessary sex scene in the first act.

The acting performances don’t help the lame script and silly storyline. I did initially think that Sophie Monk, whom plays the mystery director’s daughter, was the only one of the group with a remotely believable performance, but after the first half of the movie, I changed my mind.

Not surprisingly, this movie continues to make mistake after mistake. There are several discussions about horror movie cliches, which has been cliche since Scream did it 15 years ago. One of the biggest WTF’s in “The Hills Run Red” is allowing a gun into the story. Guns have no place in horror movies. They’re too fast and too clean to be scary weapons. The irony is that in real life, a man pointing a gun at you would probably be a lot scarier than a man wielding a knife or an axe or a chainsaw. But horror movies aren’t about real life.

The twist in “The Hills Run Red” is so obvious, it announces itself like a train approaching a station. CHOO CHOOOOO!  Just like that. Unfortunately, I think the movie could have been at least mediocre had they gone with an “April Fool’s Day” style twist. Not as “scary” in the long run, but when your movie already isn’t scary, at least you could come out of it with points for cleverness. Sadly, I get the impression that the movie fancies itself a clever version of “House of 1,000 Corpses“. But what made “1,000 Corpses” better (and I wasn’t even a huge fan of it, really) was that it was an unapologetically simple slasher movie. I can give “Hills” an ounce of credit for attempting the twist, but the execution falls so flat that it simply makes a bad movie that much worse.

The last mistake this movie makes is having false ending after false ending, in which each one seems to be trying to outdo the last in badness. Just let it die.