The Hills Have Eyes remake

Hills Have Eyes remake
Okay I'll admit it. I loved this flick much more than the original. Yes I said it and I know it's blasphemy!! I saw the original before this, and I'm sorry but i was bored to tears. It's cool if others enjoyed it, but for me it was just boring. It wasn't scary, the mutants looked like bums off the El train with some scrungy clothes, and the only person I liked in the cast was Michael Berryman.
Now I loved the remake because it was exciting. Yeah it followed the original's formula two thirds of the way but I enjoyed Aja's direction and look to the film. The score by Tomandandy (which I loved so much I bought the score) was at times eerie and adrenaline-pumping, and I liked the cast even more. Aaron Stanford as Doug I particularly liked, especially his "Straw Dogs" type transformation. He was just likeable to me. And the film was very gory, at least to me.
The third act was what pushed this film to awesome levels for me. The fight scene with Pluto and Doug I thought was fucking brutal....Doug takes a licking but it's to get his baby back but the action was pumped up a couple of notches. It didn't bore me. It was like a Sergio Leone western mixed with a horror film....which I thought was cool. There's a scene where Doug is beaten to shit, but he looks at his hand and his wedding ring.....the ring being just below the part of his finger that was cut off from the Pluto fight earlier. The way that shot looked, and the musical score involved...it just made me smile in that "Oh yes...he's going to fight back and get his damn baby daughter back." I like those kinds of stories....a hero beat to shit, but still moving forward.

Anyway it's one of my fave horror films in the past couple of years. Brutal, gory, an action-packed third act, adrenaline-pumping score, a good and capable cast, and wonderful direction from Alexander Aja is what makes this film work for me.