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I owe you an apology.

By writing a review of The Hills Have Eyes, I am acknowledging it exists. And some of the base, horrible things in the film will be "cool" to a certain breed of movie watcher and they'll plunk their $8 down on it this weekend at the multiplex. Most of that $8 will go back to the producers of the movie, who will use it to carve out a sequel of equal foulness. To those of you who value life, in reality and in the cinema, I am deeply sorry for this review.

So why write anything at all? Because I want my disapproval to be noted in conjunction with the film's release. And I want you to know that horror and cruelty are not synonymous, and a film can exist with one and without the other.

The Hills Have Eyes is not so much a horror movie, but rather just a viewing gallery that looks out over a butcher's worktable. Live meat is brought in, the butcher unveils his tools, his victim squirms and screams, and then in front of us blood is spilled ... and spilled ... and spilled. Our natural reaction is to vomit, which is so difficult to type because it gives the producers a reason to smile, as if the movie only works if it makes people sorry they were alive.

The Hills Have Eyes is sadistic and cruel. Not all of it. Just a 20-minute stretch right in the middle. But in that segment a grandmother is blown to pieces in front of her family; her daughter is molested and then shot in the head, her blood splattering on her crying baby; a teen is raped by a deformed giant; and the father is burned alive on a cross. Later, many of the bodies will be eaten, including the family dog.

The family is played by Kathleen Quinlan, who channeled an astronaut's wife in Apollo 13; Emilie de Ravin, the formerly pregnant castaway on Lost; and Ted Levine, who is punished here for his sins as Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs (he is currently a co-star in the USA channel's series Monk). There's also a young boy (Dan Byrd), his sister (Vinessa Shaw) and her husband, Doug (Aaron Stanford). I've only named one character by name, so guess who stays alive?

The family is taking a trip through the desert towing a giant silver Sudafed capsule (a 1976 Airstream), when dad stops at a dive gas station, gets bogus directions and, before you know it, they're stranded near Department of Energy property that was used to test the first atomic bombs. The locals, all horribly deformed, smell lunch and come out of radiation-filled caves for their Old Navy-clad buffet.

Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before it, The Hills Have Eyes involves one basic premise: freaks with very rusty weapons eviscerating, disemboweling and decapitating stupid travelers lost somewhere between Point A and B. Texas Chainsaw chewed up idiot teens. The Hills goes for the rest of the family. Even the infant isn't off limits.

Who has the stomach for this kind of film? Not me, and I enjoy horror movies. I'm all for splatter, for gore or for the frights that end with pitchforks, machetes or sledgehammers. But not when the targets are families, or when the violence lingers on the screen as the victims plead for their lives as brutal death sequences are carried out for each to see.

My own words echo previous ones written by Roger Ebert about the rape-epic Chaos: "[It's] ugly, nihilistic, and cruel -- a film I regret having seen. I urge you to avoid it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's 'only' a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. The movie denies not only the value of life, but the possibility of hope."

I don't think anyone will truly enjoy The Hills Have Eyes. Those who do should question their interests. It contains nothing that has made us as a people excited about the cinema, and horror films have that power. Its purpose is violence, and it attains this in style, in plot and with its characters, even the innocent ones.

If this is the future of the horror genre, then count me out.