When it was released last year, "High Tension," French filmmaker Alexandre Aja's highly visceral ode to '70s American horror movies, got the clammy, dread-soaked atmosphere down cold, but it was ultimately done in by glaring plot logic issues. The result was still potent enough to impress terror meister Wes Craven, who hired Aja to remake his low-budget 1977 cult classic, "The Hills Have Eyes" (as opposed to his vastly inferior 1985 sequel), a particularly gory bit of business about a vacationing American family who is targeted by a clan of cannibalistic mutants. Working with that ripe Craven script and a bigger budget, Aja and his writing partner Gregory Levasseur have layered in a nifty historical context involving fallout from nuclear testing, kept the performances reasonably naturalistic and have come up with that rare remake which actually manages to validate its existence while very much retaining the spirit of its predecessor.

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