Hillside Cannibals

3/24/2024

**_Caves darkly lit, blackening the night_** Several youths take a trip to the empty wastelands of SoCal to camp out and explore caves, but their plans are quickly ruined by the primordial denizens thereof. “Hillside Cannibals” (2006) is a mockbuster of the remake of “The Hills Have Eyes,” which was released eighteen days earlier. One character makes a reference to “Deliverance on amphetamines” and I understand this, but the flick isn’t really reminiscent of that iconic film due to the Southwest desert milieu (as opposed to lush northeast Georgia). Rather, it’s a mixture of “The Naked Prey,” “Gargoyles,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and, of course, the original “The Hills Have Eyes.” S. Craig Zahler was obviously inspired by it for his superior “Bone Tomahawk.” Long stretches fea