BACK IN THE MID 90’s, a little known HBO movie was released with little fanfare or critical reaction.

It has also been known as The Hills Have Eyes Part 3 despite the fact that the only thing that connects this movie with the franchise is that Wes Craven is billed as producer and his son Jonathan is credited as writer.

Yes it is primarily set in some abandoned quarry in the middle of nowhere, which can loosely connect the films but rather than be a collection of mutants infected by radiation poisoning and reeking havoc on a family, here we have a character, THOR, who has been experimented upon via re-animation. In fact it is probably more closely aligned with Frankenstein, Re-Animator, or Universal Soldier with its subject matter.

The movie doesn’t exactly offer anything new, with it’s team of scientists holed up deep underground to perform their experiments only to have the tables turned on them when their test subject becomes a blood thirsty killer, hunting them one by one.

It does though have some prominent star-pulling power in Lance Henriksen (Aliens, The Terminator) and Giovanni Ribisi (Boiler Room, The Gift) as the dropout son who comes good. And they both stand out in the cast for what is essentially mediocre characters.

In some places the dialogue is clunky but at the end of the day, this movie was never going to win awards for its high brow conversation piece. It’s an action-based horror movie that struggled to find an identity, aiming for Aliens but ending up more like The Mimic.

It’s entertaining enough, but never finds its voice or is strong enough to mark on the horror celluloid mantle of greatness.

– Paul Farrell