What a wonderful job this film does of making me just not care. IMDB has it at a 5.8, a lot of people seem to enjoy it. I am perplexed. This review will contain spoilers for the simple reason that you shouldn't watch this movie under any circumstances, so if it's ruined for you, well I've done you a service.
The premise is good. Although by the end it sort of gets taken away with itself. Unfortunately for this film there is more to a movie than just a premise, and that's about where this clunker ran out of steam.
We start off with an aspiring filmmaker, or film historian, or whatever, I'm not sure. It was never explained. Our hero is fascinated with an early 80's film entitled The Hills Run Red, which was so violent and disturbing that it was pulled after just a few showings. The director and every print of the film soon disappeared, leaving just a trailer and a few promotional items to history. Decent enough idea and jumping off point. I should have, in fact, jumped off here.
In the first 15 minutes we get the following things, A lead by a never seen character concerning the whereabouts of the directors daughter, an affair between the leads best friend and girlfriend, the lead finds the daughter in a strip club and gets her off drugs so that she'll help him find the lost reels of her dads film. We're even treated to a detoxing montage for a character who we've seen for about 2 minutes. It's hilariously unnecessary.
So then, once we get all "character development" out of the way, the group of four head to the remote house where the film was shot. Perfectly enough, it's set deep in the woods in the middle of nowhere. From there it devolves into your usual chase, slash and capture fest. That is until the final few scenes when stuff just gets overly silly again. Characters have arguments that are so preposterous and exist out of nowhere that I really wanted to shoot myself in the head.
The first 30 and last 30 minutes of the film are disturbingly shitty and contain both unnecessary and unwanted character "development" and that is sandwiched by 30 minutes of fairly boring chase movie standardness.
Only Sophie Monk. as the daughter Alexa, stands out in any way onscreen. Every other character is just there and brings almost nothing to the film, or worse just makes you not care. Screen veteran William Sadler as the director daddy is just goofy, even though I'm sure he was aiming for maniacal. It's just a dunce of a film that can't be taken seriously in any way.
There's some boob and some teased rape but that's about it. A few gore spots are nice but not a movie does it make.
The Hills may Run Red but they also run stupid. Avoid.
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