If there's one contemporary film-maker who understands seat-edge horror, it's Alexandre Aja. Here, the French director follows up the terrifying Switchblade Romance with his first Hollywood feature - a ferociously effective reworking of Wes Craven's 1977 cult classic. Like the original, the tale depicts a vacationing family (headed by Ted Levine and Kathleen Quinlan) falling victim to a murderous, mutant clan after breaking down in a stretch of American desert. Here though, the savages are not simply the spawn of inbreeding, but the genetically mutated offspring of miners who were caught up in the radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. This innovative twist is part of a dedication to realism from Aja and co-writer Gregory Lévasseur that takes this visceral remake to startling new heights. Once the brutal action explodes, there's no let-up, with gore precisely matched by atmospheric tension. Yet while the killers' casualness is deeply disturbing, it's the ordinary family's shocking survival tactics that give the movie its lingering impact.

Based on Wes Craven's 1977 suspenseful cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carter family soon realizes the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.