Wrong Turn (2003)

Originally Written

Saturday, October 7, 2006

While watching Wrong Turn I felt flashes of deja vu as it appeared to be quite similar in style and execution as House Of Wax. Essentially, Wrong Turn detours off the main highway of unique horror and on the the well traveled side road of been there, done that.

The setting of the film should be no surprise; a bunch of college students stuck in the middle of the back woods of West Virginia, lost and stranded due to car trouble, rather close to House of Wax so far. The two potheads of the group stay behind and make-out while the remaining four head off to find a telephone... in the middle of the woods of West Virginia! Obviously it's no surprise what happens to the two left behind in another House of Wax deja vu moment.

Of course there is no telephone in the middle of nowhere, but this group of college students (one is supposedly a medical school graduate) decide to enter a run down cabin to see if they can find a telephone. Obviously they give no thought to the fact that in the back woods of Virginia it might be a little unwise to be letting yourself into some strange dump miles from civilization. But that doesn't stop them from entering and rummaging through everything in the house, only to find no phone (big surprise!) and a large assortment of human body parts!

So begins the chase from a group of three mutated redneck retards with a hunger for human meat. It's no surprise who dies and no surprise who lives. It's also not a big surprise that there are so many things in this film that not only make no sense but make no sense to the point that the writers obviously didn't care enough to even try. For example, you’re given the impression during the introduction of the film that there is knowledge of these freaks living in the mountains, and there have been quite a few people who have gone missing from this area, yet these guys have never been caught. Seems a little outrageous to me when all it would take is a helicopter to fly over the woods and clearly spot their shack and over a dozen bloodied vehicles sitting in the middle of a large clearing.

It's clear these films are only for the viewers who are willing to suspend disbelief and willing to turn their brain off for an hour and thirty minutes, otherwise you'll go insane. I don't have a problem with no brainer films, but it's the mixture of stupidity in a semi-serious film which tends to annoy me, it would have been so simple to rewrite parts of this film to at least make it believable. Some other things that bothered me was the fact that these guys killed everyone right away but spare Eliza Dushku's character; keeping her alive and taking her back to their shack, I guess they were saving her for dessert? And am I the only person who found it strange that when the mutants set fire to the watch tower it doesn't start a widespread forest fire! Then one of them ends up surviving an explosion should have blown everything to little bits, and its' the same guy who survived a fall from a 50 foot tree earlier!

Overall, Wrong Turn is another totally ridiculous horror film that does whatever it wants whether it makes sense or not. It's definitely better than House Of Wax, with acting being slightly better (I'll take Elisha Dushku over Elisha Cuthbert any day), the story while played out is more entertaining as well and the major plus is there was not a whole lot of useless dialog and wasted scenes. In the end, Wrong Turn is almost a glorified X-files episode, in fact I believe they even did an episode a lot like this, except it was only 45 minutes long! Horror buffs are sure to enjoy this, but for me it's a film that could have been polished a little more before being released.

5/10