Hills Have Eyes II, The

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The director, Martin Weisz , doesn't lean on a lot of noise and editing tricks. He can relax, since all the scares are built into the Cravens' script, which invokes both "Goonies" and last year's instant-classic, chicks-versus-cave-dwelling-vampires flick "The Descent."

Empire Kim Newman

Pretty solid gory horror.

Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling

A retro horror-comedy featuring quick deaths and cheapo-looking gore, with a few dorky laughs and gross-outs but not so many scares.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

For anyone other than hardcore gore-hounds, this flipbook of deliberately invoked global-unrest horrors, from friendly-fire killings to rape as a breeding weapon, is effectively mean and unrelenting--and pretty far from fun.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Though written by Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan Craven, this is pretty standard stuff: A lot of creeping through dark tunnels with just enough characterization to help you keep track of who's still alive, but not enough gore to really satisfy fans of Aja's bloodbath.

Variety John Anderson

The politics of "Hills 2" won't enlist any new converts to the horror ranks, but existing fans will be drawn to the combination of visceral tension, violent payoff and the patented Craven gift for innovative gore.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

It's not fun to watch.

The New York Times Matt Zoller Seitz

The film is brazenly indebted to old cowboys-and-Indians movies and to James Cameron’s "Aliens." Gleefully sensationalistic and paced like an adults-only shoot-'em-up video game, it's ultimately less interested in subversion and subtext than in making viewers squirm, shriek and throw up into their popcorn bags.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

The Hills Have Eyes 2 proves that even grisly, gory violence can be awfully boring.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The mutants are brain-damaged; the filmmakers don't have that excuse to justify this movie, which is the kind of thing the sergeant would call "a stunning display of individual and group stupidity."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson

A perfunctory gore fest and quite possibly the year's worst date movie.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

As a fan of the genre, and someone who genuinely loves such recent horror efforts as "The Descent" and "The Host," I respectfully suggest that the atmosphere for horror movies might be better if moviemakers stopped making ones like this.

Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour

You'd like to think such bankruptcy of imagination means we've seen the last of these subterranean creeps. But you know they'll be back soon to collect their royalties from the gore hounds who apparently don't care how dull or warmed over the accompanying package.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

After this disgrace, it's time to shut the hills' eyes for good.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

On the whole, this is an awfully long slog through very arid terrain, in which generic soldiers track, fight and try to escape from generic villains (you'd be surprised at how uninteresting mutant flesh-eaters can be). I can't speak for the hills, but I spent most of the movie just trying to keep my eyes open.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Assembles the most motley group of incompetents this side of a "Police Academy" movie, yet somehow misses the laughs. But humorlessness is probably the least of the film's problems, lagging behind amateur-night performances from the no-name cast, a homogenous visual palette (and from a music-video director, no less!), and lots of pointless sadism.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

As witless and simpleminded as the irradiated humanoids that serve as the franchise’s bad guys.

Film Threat Felix Vasquez, Jr.

This horror fanatic doesn't have room for Craven in his genre anymore. Collect your cash and call it a day already, Wes.