New kid on the horror-genre block

Horror has a new director in France’s Alex Aja, a fan, a filmmaker and an artist. Asked by maestro Wes Craven to step into his shoes, the French director has made his own version of Craven’s classic The Hills Have Eyes, a scary prospect even with Craven’s blessing, as revealed in his interview.

Now first of all, was there any degree of reluctance on your part to take on a remake of a Wes Craven classic?

Yeah, I mean, of course; because first of all after watching High Tension Wes asked to meet us and talk about the idea of remaking one of his cult movies, The Hills Have Eyes. And, you know, we grew up watching it. I’m 27. I was born in 1978, so I was too young. I was not even born when the movie released the first time. But I grew up in the ’80s and the ’90s and I was so frustrated of movies that were available at that time. So all my pleasure as a film addict came from all the video clips and all the rental tapes that we can find. And that’s, you know, when we were like 10, 11 years old and we were out discovering The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deliverance, and, I mean, Night of the Living Dead, Halloween – all these films.

So what did you come up with when you asked the question?

I mean, first of all I was thinking about, okay, why I like so much the original film, and I realized that the reason why I was so much attached to that film was not the same reason that I’m attached to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Last House on the Left. These films are really scary, disturbing, interesting and very serious and realistic, which are not the case of The Hills Have Eyes. I love this movie so much because of Michael Berryman, because of, ah, the look of the villains, because of the wild world like the ’70s feeling, the way they act, the low-budget feeling, and all that put together that give this very kitsch dark humor aspect of the film. So I realized that, you know, it was maybe possible to return, reinvent the film in such a way that it’s going to be much more scary, disturbing, violent and realistic than the original film.

Do you have to look at what a 21st century audience is likely to go for when you make those decisions?

What I’m telling you right now was really just among my writing partner and myself. And then we came back to Wes with this idea of the nuclear testing background and Wes was very excited and decided to let us try to write the script. That’s where everything started.

Where does your script completely depart from the original?

We tried to keep the plot, the story, the characters, to do a real remake, but in the same time try to reinvent everything and with this simple idea of the nuclear testing background, everything came in a very obvious way – the look of the people from the hills, the mannequins, everything is linked to the idea of the testing area.

Fear is such a subjective feeling. So when you craft a horror movie, how do you know that you’re going to be successful in scaring an audience?

It’s very difficult, and if you try to think for the audience you’ve failed. I’m a very good audience member. I’m still scared when I’m going to see a very good scary movie. I watched recently The Descent. I love movies. Before being a filmmaker I’m really a movie audience member and so I’m trying to think about what’s going to scare me as an audience member and I’m saying, okay, if it works on me it should work on other people.

How surprised were you that High Tension kind of paved the way for you to make a Hollywood movie?

That’s funny because the idea at the beginning of High Tension was let’s make a movie and let’s pay a tribute to all the films that influenced us and made us want to be filmmakers. So that was like the idea at the beginning, to make like a patchwork of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, The Last House on the Left, and it’s funny because that movie was very well received here in the US and allowed us to come. So that’s great. I mean we paid a tribute and in a way they are, like, welcoming us now. I mean I’m living a dream. I’m living a dream. I’m living the dream that, you know, started when I was 10 – like being able to make movie, to make really scary movie.

Why do you want to make scary movies as opposed to other kinds of movies? I mean what is it about the genre that really interests you?

I can tell for myself as an audience member, what I love in a movie is when I go in the screening room watching a good horror movie I’m not watching a film I’m living something. I’m living an experience.

Rated R-18, The Hills Have Eyes is now showing in local theaters.