The Hills Run Red

I just watched The Hills Run Red. I knew there was a reason the DVD had been sitting unwatched on my shelf for a year. I hope whoever made this film doesn't come and kill me for not liking it. I can't say that it's not original and well-made, but I can say that it's not the kind of thing I enjoy. It makes a nice entry into several sub-genres: the "don't go poking your nose where it doesn't belong" one, the "killer hicks" one, and possibly the "blackest of black comedies" one. It's a good movie, quality-wise. It's just that personally, I prefer something less bleak.

There are slashers that I like: Curtains, Prom Night, the original My Bloody Valentine, various giallos. There's just something I don't care for about the kind of slasher where the victims (spoiler alert)



end up in the middle of the woods dead among the killer's piles of bodies in various states of dismemberment and nobody will ever find out what happened to them. It's not the fact that the killers win in the end so much as that I can't stand the thought of someone's child, even an adult child, disappearing and never being found. I like the idea of closure and a proper burial. I also like the episodes of Unsolved Mysteries on which there is an update.

Also, the killer hick subgenre doesn't do it for me. I have lived in the South all my life, so I know that hicks are scary. I probably wouldn't like killer shark movies either if I lived on an island surrounded by shark-infested waters.

So, in summary, give me a haunted house movie any day over this crap. I am old-fashioned and stuck in the 80s. I know that won't make me popular among horror fans, but as long as they voice their displeasure from far away over the internet that's fine. Everyone is entitled to like what they like, until it encroaches on what someone else likes, like being alive.