FRIGHTFEST UK ’09: Film Review: The Hills Run Red
The Hills Run Red (2009)
Director: Dave Parker
Cast: Tad Hildenbrink, William Sadler, Sophie Monk
Review By: ZC Barry
The second film shown at London’s 2009 Frightfest was The Hills Run Red, a straight to DVD offering from The Dead Hate The Living director Dave Parker. Starring Tad Hildenbrink (Epic Movie, H20 Extreme), William Sadler (Die Hard 2, Shadowheart) and Sophie Monk (Date Movie, Click) this promises to reinvent the psychopath genre the same way Scream did for slasher films.
Picked up by Warner Premiere, the DVD division of Warner Bros, The Hills Run Red tells the story of Tyler (Hildenbrink), a film and journalism student, as he embarks on a journey to find a legendary “video nasty” of the same name. All prints of the film were destroyed after its first screening turned the audience mad, and all that still exists of it is a grainy trailer on the internet.
After tracking down Alexa (Monk), the director’s daughter and only surviving member of the original cast, Tyler recruits his girlfriend Serina (Janet Montgomery), and his best friend Lalo (Alex Wyndham) to go in search of the original movie set, naturally in the middle of the woods, miles out of town. As the group go deeper into the forest to find director Concannon’s (Sadler) house, Babyface (Raicho Vasilev), the killer from the film within a film, appears to terrorize the students and we realize the film hasn’t been released because the principle photography was never finished…
Trying to be a post-modern marriage of Scream, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Cannibal Holocaust, The Hills Run red is a film steeped in self-reference and homage’s to the whole horror genre. While at its core it is a slasher movie – the protagonists are nothing more than a bunch of kids with backpacks wandering around the woods – Parker throws in elements of torture and enough twists that the audience never gets too comfortable.
While not quite the sum of its parts and light on actual scares, the amount of time given to each of the elements does make for a complete and very watchable film. There is nothing new from THRR, but then again there hasn’t been anything new in the genre since Scream in 1996, and the industry is still capable of producing (what seems like) hundreds of enjoyable slasher movies.*
Unfortunately The Hills Run Red is about 20 years too late for the “video nasty” era and a decade too late to really gross out audiences with its sub-par “torture porn”, resulting in a film that’s too cocky, believing its own self-referential jokes will be enough to carry the film. That said, THRR did have one scene with Babyface that may have been the absolute highlight of Frightfest 2009 (you’ll know it when you see it), and it is an otherwise accomplished if rarely outstanding film.
*SPOILERS* (Highlight to reveal)
In the Q&A after the film Parker gave the audience some insights into its making. Originally he had shot a teaser, which was shown to Dark Castle, who was looking to make a film for Warner Premiere. The teaser was really dark and horrific and Parker basically thought there was no chance that WP would pick up a film as nasty as THRR. They loved it though and the shot that eventually became the basis for the film’s end scene (well, end apart from the twisted last shot) was the theatre macabre, where the hero is strapped down and made to watch The Hills Run Red with a cinema full of dead bodies.
While that scene was toned down for the film proper there was also talk of scenes that were cut from the final version, including what was a torturous rape scene for star Janet Montgomery. As the film was lacking a bit in committing to the more uncomfortable scenes, there is some hope that the DVD could provide extended and alternate versions, which could only enhance the film.
*END SPOILERS*
Providing a solid introduction to horror that could lead newly of age cinema goers to the classics which it references or even just for entertainment on a suitably dark and stormy night, The Hills Run Red is an above average slasher movie that’s well worth a rental or a purchase when it comes out on September 29th.
ZC Barry writes for Zombie Command; a UK based zombie website featuring zombie news, reviews and interviews.
Brutal as Hell Rating:
3 ½ out of 5
*Excluding Rob Zombie films that obviously don’t fall into this enjoyable category.
