By Stephen Pytak 

     This is a pretty dynamite retelling of Wes Craven's
thriller, with a few new twists.
     There's a fleshed out backstory explaining why
the boogeymen haunting the desert are there in the 
first place.
     And there are new things to see, including the 
mining town they live in, which was devastated by
nuclear testing previously by the government.
     Some horror fans were put off by the fact that this
was a remake, and has the same basic story as the
original.
     That didn't bother me so much. What I was 
curious about was what Director Alexandre "High
Tension" Aja was going to do with it. And I was
not disappointed.
     He's got his own recipe for suspense and stalk-
and-slash. He made this material feel quite fresh. The
ending in particular.
    There's also a nifty scene where one of our heroes, Doug,
(Aaron Stanford), is captured by the hill people and tossed 
into a butcher's freezer filled with fresh body parts. Sick.
Unnerving. Perfect for a film like this.
    Stanford, who played "Pyro" in "X2 (2003)," was among
the many great faces that blessed this production. The cast
also included Robert Joy, who was "Charlie" in Romero's
"Land of the Dead (2005)." And Ted Lavine, who was
"Jame Gumb" in "Silence of the Lambs (1990)."
     According to IMDB, Aja's next project is a ghost story
called "The Waiting."
     The son of film director Alexandre Arcady and 
French cinema critic Marie-Jo Jouan, Aja is earning his
place in the horror history books. 
     If he's doing something in the horror or suspense
genres, you can bet I'll be looking for it.