Review of The Hills Run Red (2009) by Sarah E — 23 Jul 2011

The Hills Run Red is one lucky fucking movie. It has the great fortune of having a great premise and soundtrack, despite its other more noticeable shortcomings which include a chaotic conclusion and inane plot twists. Oh, yeah, and a slew of performances that are so bad they're bad instead of working their way around to being good again.

Tad Hilgenbrinck, the comic thespian who played Stifler's Brother in the American Pie movies, plays an ambitious film student on the hunt for a little known but uber-terrifying 80s horror film called The Hills Run Red. This film within a film was released to select theatres in 1982, but it was quickly pulled due to its horrific and graphic content. The director and producer of the film then vanished, along with any traces of the film. The premise forgave the actors for their performances, simply because it was so tantalizing, and the script occasionally discusses the nature of filmmaking and film criticism. This isn't a graduate level study of text and culture, but it's a good start, especially from a film starring Stifler's Brother.

Unfortunately, The Hills Run Red quickly runs off the rails, leaving behind all its chilling mystery for the sake of cheap thrills and unabashed excess. It's almost like there were two filmmakers working on set, and to make the work easier, they divided the movie into two separate parts. As such, the ending of the movie, which plays out beautifully from a purely cinematic perspective, makes absolutely no sense given the context of the film. Its a rushed and sloppy conclusion more befitting of the action-horror venture the movie descends into during its third act, not the great set-up provided in the film's first and second acts.

Haha, Iron Man 2: you suck more than an independent horror film starring Stiffler's Brother.