The Hills Have Eyes 2 (R, 2007)

Those yucky desert mutants have resurfaced, this time in search of females for breeding. Their all-male tribalism is underlined in the first scene of THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2, in which a not-so-grotesque-looking woman gives painful birth to a baby and is promptly whacked in the head and killed by a hulking male mutant. The mutants' apparent misogyny is then juxtaposed with the coed U.S. National Guard, whose trainees are working together in a harrowing mock battle set in a desert that passes for Kandahar, Afghanistan. When they're hoodwinked by a woman wailing about her dead babies, it's clear that gender integration has been achieved in contemporary warfare. Still, the young trainees aren't ready for what they discover in New Mexico. They've heard the rumors, of course, that Section 16 was used by the military to test nuclear weapons during the 1950s. But they can't anticipate that, 50 years later, descendents of everyone who was neglected by the government and deformed by radiation would still be looking for vengeance against the able-bodied and, especially, the pretty.

The movie features a disturbingly profuse amount of blood and gore -- battle with the mutants results in all manner of bodily abuse, and the mutants themselves arrive looking mightily pre-abused, their heads and limbs misshapen. After much shooting, hacking, and screaming, the National Guard unit is reduced to its survivor core, at which point they're so angry and anguished that their violent payback takes on particularly sexualized characteristics -- it's all about penetrating bodies and kicking crotches.

Studio: Fox Atomic
Director: Martin Weisz
Cast: Jacob Vargas, Jessica Stroup, Michael McMillian
Genre: Horror
Run time: 89 minutes
Theatrical release: March 23, 2007
DVD release: July 17, 2007
MPAA Rating: R
MPAA explanation: prolonged sequences of strong gruesome horror violence and gore, a rape and language.