This is one of those movies I kept meaning to watch but didn’t want any future cross-country trips ruined by mutants. Although to be fair, you can find mutants right in one’s hometown, so there’s no point in being scared of the voodoo mountain mutants hiding in caves.

The film starts at a gas station in a ghost town. An old man is packing up to leave and his granddaughter begs to go with him. The old man wants nothing to do with her, or who she is associated with, which by the looks of her teeth is…meth heads?

The old man is distracted as a family with a camper pulls up and ask directions to the nearest silver mine. Okay, even with the extremely loose EPA regulations in the 70s, I’m still positive they won’t just LET you wander into a silver mine. The old man (rightfully) tells them they are insane, the silver mine is closed, and they should go back to to the main road.

If I stop at a ghost town gas station and see the worker frantically packing up, instead of leaning back in a rocker chewing straw, I would also get the hell out. But between the five adults, 2 German Shepards, and 1 baby, there’s not a full brain between them. Instead, they top of the tank, and head towards their stupid, nostalgia-fueled doom.

After getting lost on the road and driving into some desert brush, they bend the axle on their station wagon and are stuck in the middle of nowhere, with nothing for miles around except Air Force practice base and hills. With eyes.

The father, who is a former Cleveland cop (and good at it), spews a racist filled tirade and heads off on foot back to the gas station to get help. The son-in-law (who is considerably LESS racist) heads off in the other direction in search of non-crazy-old-man help. This leaves the mother, the younger son, younger daughter, older daughter, and her baby alone with the two dogs.

The dog immediately start acting strange and on edge. The family is on edge, but definitely not as much as they should be. Especially when one dog takes off and the son goes after her. The son reemerges a few hours later in a catatonic state. He doesn’t tell anyone right away what happened, but the family is about to meet their unintended neighbors. And they don’t want to borrow sugar.

Actually, they probably do. And meat. And bullets. And knives. And babies. The hill people just want everything the family owns. And the voodoo mountain people don’t play nice. The father makes it back to the gas station, the old man (who is somehow STILL there) conveniently tells him about the hill people. His son, seemingly affected by the radiation testing going on just up the way, was born too large and too crazy to be handled.

The old man tried to kill his son years ago, but instead made him angry enough to kidnap another woman from town and make up into the hills to start their own colony of radiation children. It was a small town to begin with, so narrowing that gene pool isn’t going to do much for the census next decade.

Then the massacre begins. The ex-cop father is basically crucified by the hill family, and the mother and older daughter are shot inside the camper. The baby is kidnapped after they rape the younger daughter. I’m not sure why they didn’t kidnap the daughter either, especially since they are hell bent on expanding their family. Anyways, the only people left are the younger daughter, the son, and the son-in-law, who has returned from his SOS trip with just a bunch of army surplus supplies he found at a nearby dump.

And then….every one left turns into fucking Macgyver. I’m not sure if it’s the radiation or the desperation, but everyone is now a tactical engineer, coming up with schemes and traps for the hill people. Then a parkour inspired chase through the hills happen, and everyone comes out covered in snakes.

There’s no happy ending to this story. Those silver mine jobs are never coming back. People living illegally on government land can’t register to vote. Using your dead mother’s body as a decoy just doesn’t have the same “oomph” as it used to. Life is a slow march towards death in the desert. Might as well just stick to the interstate.