The Hills Have Eyes Part II has perhaps garnered more apologies than apologists since its release in 1985. Wes Craven distanced himself from the film for some years. Producer Peter Locke regretted not securing enough money for the director to properly complete the film. Actor Michael Berryman, in defense of Craven, noted that sometimes you just have to pay the bills. Some critics and scholars dismissed the film out of hand, and disparaged the film's inclusion of extensive flashback footage from the original The Hills Have Eyes (1977). Particular criticism was reserved for the fact that one of the flashbacks was from the perspective of Beast the dog. For example, Mikita Brottman notes, “Part II is really little more than a pointless cash-in, with numerous flashbacks by characters replaying the events of the original film, and when Craven runs out of human survivors, even the surviving dog, Beast, is given a flashback of its very own.” Jennifer Brown adds: “In 1985 Wes Craven made a rather poor sequel to Hills, in which the dog is given a flashback.” Some crew members professed that the flashback footage in the final edit was a surprise to everyone at the first production screening, while others claimed that these were in the script from the start of shooting, a matter that will be addressed herein.

The Hills Have Eyes Part II (from here on Hills II) may have been dismissed as a “bad” movie. However, this dismissal does not evaluate Hills II in terms of the film it is trying to be. Fundamentally, Hills II tentatively explores the long-term impacts of trauma, and in that sense, it shares much in common with Craven's entire filmography. Hills II's significance to Craven's oeuvre, minor though it may be, comes in the way trauma and the (im)possibility of coping constitutes not only the film's themes but also the structure of the narrative itself. In-keeping with Robin Wood's analysis of horror, the film wrestles with the impossibility of “assimilating” Otherness—in this case represented both by the cannibal family of the original film, and even the motion picture sequel itself—and accepts, with some ambivalence, the necessity of “annihilating” it.