In a super saturated horror film market- it’s become tougher to find films that stand out above the rest. It started in the 90s with Scream which brought back the old school horror but with a twist, and has since peaked with the advent of splatterhouse films like Saw that take advantage of grisly new special effects and exploit shock to get a rise out of viewers. Now, everything from low-budget gimmick horror like Donkey Punch to mainstream resurrections like Jason and The Unvited have been brought out to satisfy the masses. It can be tough finding the next big thing, but this straight to DVD release of The Hills Run Red has some potential though it still runs into the same formula near the end. Teaming with gore and nudity, fans of the darker side of the horror genre will probably find this a solid watch, but be warned it’s not for the timid.
Tyler(Tad Hilgenbrink) develops an unhealthy obsession with finding the full story behind Babyface, a exploitation horror flick that has disappeared into the underground. He tracks down one of the former actresses, Alexa (Sophie Monk) working at a stripper joint addicted to coke. He both sleeps with her and gets her off the coke, but while he’s busy doing with that, his neglected girlfriend cheats on him with his best friend because he’s never around. They regroup though, and all end up going back to the shooting location of the film to dig up some answers, where Tyler realizes to his grim surprise that the reason why the film was never released was because it was not acting after all.
Shock Gore – There’s lots of it in The Hills Run Red, but it’s craftily done by putting most of it as old homemade footage that Tyler previews while trying to dig up dirt on Babyface, a forest-dwelling Jason-style killer that wears a doll mask over his disfigured face. The movie for one starts out with one of the most grisly scenes I’ve seen in a while, a boy cutting his face off with a pair of scissors. The excess torture-gore continues throughout on par with splatterhouse flicks like Saw and Turistas, and near the end, the use of barbed wire might have most folks a bit disturbed by its excesses.
Breasts Abound – Classic horror always has topless shots- but what’s interesting about The Hills Run Red is that it probably pushes more of the envelope with this side of things than most (probably also a reason why it didn’t get theater distribution). Tyler’s girlfriend, Serina (Janet Montgomery) gets a decent amount of topless screen time too, but the real hit is Sophie Monk- who even has a few encounters that hint toward something non-consensual. There’s minutes upon minutes of frontal nudity for those that care- and unlike most horror which tends to keep the two separate- (aka teenagers messing around when they shouldn’t, only to get punished by Jason), sex is pretty much mixed into the horror that it’s almost as one reviewer dubbed part of the subgenre of “torture porn”.
Something Old Meets Something New – As with most horror, it’s about how you execute since the premise is often familiar and the certain twists and turns are all to be expected. Like Scream, the characters also muse about their fates a bit with the knowledge of how things will turn out and there’s always a final surprise. Horror fans should figure out fairly early where things are going and not be fooled, but the movie does try its hardest to throw about some smoke screen early on. The best part of The Hills Run Red though is probably how it’s a splatterhouse within a horror film, in some sense merging genres and managing to do a little of both well while keeping a strong tempo throughout the whole film that doesn’t let up until the end.
Conclusion – The Hills Run Red is better than most stuff on the market if you can deal with the exploitive filmmaking that is strangely self-aware. Director Dave Parker has been in the horror genre for a while and seems to know well what he’s doing. His ability to navigate out of horror stereotypes and still fulfill the expectations of horror fans is what makes The Hills Run Red work. It’s still missing a better premise (and possibly a budget) that keeps it from being your typical barnyard slasher flick, but will easily top sub-par horrors like Joy Ride and Vacancy any day. Recommended, but only for fans of extreme horror.
In the vein of horror classics from the 1970s and 80s, Dark Castle's The Hills Run Red follows Tyler, a film fanatic whose obsession with finding a co...More at HotMovieSale.com
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