Normally I am forgiving of most low-budget "young folks in danger" types of low-grade horror films because they sometimes rise above expectations, the shot-on-video HIGHWAY TO HELL being a good example. But this one is a mess of missed opportunities. Same premise as HILLS HAVE EYES, but a group of teenager/early 20s rather than a family. That in itself is a missed opportunity (but not a big one) because we all know where horror films go when there's a gang of gregarious kids around. There's a stupid and unnecessary prologue where we see 2 girls get killed that pretty much gives away the whole story in 3 minutes. If these kids were any goofier, they'd be in a cartoon instead. There's no build of suspense, the frights are few, the cannibals look like friends and family of the film-makers with very little make-up or reason to be the way they are. And there's too many of them anyway. The cannibal hide-out is a cave and then it's an old building, then a cave again. There's no good sense of where anything is here. The leader of the cannibals, while plenty big enough, has the most ludicrous facial appearance and isn't at all scary, his mate is just a screaming mimi. With a decent effort on makeup and a bit of style and maturity this could have been pretty good, but save your time and watch HILLS HAVE EYES instead. Heck, even HILLS HAVE EYES 2 is grade A compared to this.
