The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)
Directed by Martin Weisz
No — The Hills Have Eyes 2 is not woke, scoring 11 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The sequel to a remake arrives with the modest ambition of putting a National Guard training unit in the New Mexico desert and letting the inbred residents of Sector 16 do what inbred residents do.
Consciousness Markers
The National Guard squad includes Black, Latino, and Asian actors in prominent roles, but their presence is not framed as a deliberate diversity statement or identity-driven commentary.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext appear in the film.
The film features a female soldier who fights to survive, but the plot centers on sexual violence and forced breeding, offering no feminist critique or agenda.
Race is not a thematic concern; the antagonists are inbred mutants, not a racialized group, and no racial commentary is present.
Although the setting is a former nuclear testing site, the film does not engage with climate change or environmental activism.
No critique of capitalism, wealth inequality, or corporate power appears in the film.
The film does not promote body positivity or challenge conventional beauty standards.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are present.
The film is a horror sequel, not a historical revisionist work.
The film is an exploitation horror sequel with no preachy or didactic messaging.
Why it received this score
The sequel to a remake arrives with the modest ambition of putting a National Guard training unit in the New Mexico desert and letting the inbred residents of Sector 16 do what inbred residents do. Martin Weisz, a music video veteran, directs with the urgency of a man who has been told the catering truck leaves at six. The result is ninety minutes of dim corridors, screaming, and a screenplay by Wes and Jonathan Craven that treats characterization as a rumor it heard secondhand.
On the matter of representation, the squad is notably varied, with Black, Latino, and Asian performers filling out the ranks. The film never remarks on this. Nobody delivers a speech about the value of diversity before being dragged into a bolt-hole. The casting simply happens, which by the standards of the era is either commendable restraint or indifference. We lean toward indifference. There is no feminist reading to be extracted from a plot that hinges on the abduction of women for forced breeding, and the film offers no critique of that arrangement, only a lurid presentation of it. Race is not a theme. The mutants are mutants, not a metaphor for anyone in particular. There is no environmental sermon, though the setting is a former nuclear test site, no indictment of capital, no celebration of body diversity, no neurodivergent arc, and no revisionist history. The film has no argument to make about the past, the economy, or the climate.
The remainder is a catalog of transgressive images assembled without conviction. It is not preachy. It is not anything, really. A film can be many things at zero across the board, and this one chooses violence, repetition, and a bayonet. We record the findings without enthusiasm.
THEMATIC TAGS: sequel, remake (of the 1977 original via its 2006 predecessor), true_story (no), book_adaptation (no), superhero (no), oscar_winner (no), box_office_number_one (no).
Final applicable thematic tags: ["sequel"]
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A group of National Guard trainees on a routine mission find themselves up against cannibalistic mutants in the New Mexico desert.
Questions about The Hills Have Eyes 2
Is The Hills Have Eyes 2 woke?
No — The Hills Have Eyes 2 is not woke, scoring 11 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Hills Have Eyes 2 have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 25.
How does The Hills Have Eyes 2 compare to other 2007 movies?
It ranks #73 of the 201 films from 2007 we've scored; their average is 12. The wokest is Like Stars on Earth (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.