Or rather, the have mutated people living in them with walkie talkies and 50’s style mannequins. I went to go see it so you could do yourselves a favor and AVOID it. It’s about 17 minutes too long, and most of the first half has nothing going on in it. Just a creepy guy at the gas station opeing a styrofoam to-go box with an ear in it. Nice of the mutants to put it in a to-go box for him.

The very beginning rocks your socks off, some nice kills to keep you interested and a good set up. The problem is what follows. The movie had no momentum to keep it going. It was slow paced, but not for the right reasons (or really any reason at all). The pace didn’t build any suspense or develop the story and it resulted in the most boring first act I had ever seen in a horror movie. There were so many opportunities for it to build suspense or do SOMETHING. Nothing happened. The film took its time developing the characters on the human family side, yet there was no development on the villains’ side. It was just like: here’s a bunch of angry mutants killing and eating humans, which would have been fine if that’s what had actually happened throughout the movie. It would have at least held my attention.

The film also seemed oddly anti-american, maybe that’s because there was a french director. Alexandre Aja (HAUTE TENSION) co-wrote the screenplay with Wes Craven and some other french guy. There’s a bunch of weird symbolism with the American flag and one of the mutants singing the national anthem. That was a problem because it almost seemed like it was thrown in there at the last minute without much thought involved.

The end almost made it worth watching the whole thing, but not quite. It was too little too late. The worst part of this whole experience was going to the theater thinking I was going to pay a matinee price and ended up paying full price because it was after four pm.
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