National Guard troops sent to an area of the New Mexico desert to resupply the telecommunications unit stationed there (hoping to catch a glimpse of the gruesome killers of the family in the first film). When they arrive, they see the telecom unit have all been slaughtered, and soon they come into contact with the local radioactive, blood-thirsty mutant inhabitants who pick them off one by one. Except the women soldiers, they have other plans for them.
I’m not much of a fan of remakes (especially if the film worked fine in the first place), and a sequel to a remake seems twice as redundant. But the remake of Wes Craven’s classic mutant horror flick was far from the worst of the remakes, so I held out at least a little hope for this Martin Weisz sequel to that remake (although it is not a remake of the original’s sequel. Confused? Yes? Good!), especially since Craven himself has had input in the screenplay, co-writing it with son Jonathan.
The film starts with a truly disgusting moment (the birth of a mutant), that at the very least makes you stand up and take notice, offensive as it may be. It’s a very brave opener. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much all downhill after that, in a ‘Is that the best they could come up with?’ fashion. The heavy-handed story (which, if you think about it, is structured a little like ‘Predator’ meets ‘Aliens’, and the mutants even make Predator sounds!) is nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is (Another Iraq War commentary? Yawn!), though the direction (Weisz shows some talent behind the camera, it should be noted), cinematography, and makeup are a fair sight better than they have any right to be under the circumstances.
But this is a boring (the characters aren’t even up to ‘stock standard stereotype’ level, nor are any of them likeable), stupidly handled and mostly worthless exercise. And yet it’s not the worst film Craven has ever been involved in, that would be his first directorial effort, the poorly made ‘Last House on the Left’.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Can we now officially call Wes Craven a hack? This is a tired, badly written, boring and pointless sequel to a remake.
