Youths being killed one by one, a killer in the woods, stalk and slash, mutated cannibals...it's all been done a hundred times before. But not always as effectively and brutally as Wrong Turn. It's all in the execution folks, quite literally.
Chris Flynn (the always intense looking Desmond Harrington) is a Doctor on his way to an appointment across the other side of the country. A chemical spill and crash on the freeway means 2 hours of waiting in traffic and being late. Keen to avoid this, Chris takes a dirt road along Bear Mountain hoping to cut back onto the freeway some miles ahead of the jam. I bet he wishes he didn't.
This wrong turn causes him to smash into an already wasted people carrier. The owners are a bunch of mountain bikers who have had their tires shredded by barb-wire lain by apparent hillbillies.
Chris and three others (Eliza Dushku, Jeremy Sisto and the very annoying Emmanuelle Chriqui) decide to walk to the nearest phone while a moronic and deserving-to-die boyfriend and girlfriend (Kevin Zegers and Lindy Booth, who also met a similar fate in Dawn of the Dead) stay behind to guard the cars.
That couple don't last very long and the only dwelling the quartet stumble upon is the disgusting house of a bunch of ferocious, inbred, cannibalistic mountain men. It's filled with the stolen belongings of people they've already massacred, but no one picks up on this until the men suddenly return.
It's clear from the outset who's going to live and who's going to die. Chris is strong-willed and level-headed and responds to intense situations with logic and cunning, while most of the others do stupid things and do all but paint a bullseye on their forehead.
Shot and directed with an atmospheric color pallet, a fair amount of tension, some grisly kills and lots of quick, nervous cuts (without turning into confusion), Wrong Turn succeeds where most other wannabe horrors that fall into the same sub-genre fail. In the post-Scream world horror movies were all about irony and smart-ass. Wrong Turn wisely includes neither. Currently horror movies are all about remakes, with one remake coming out every other week. Wrong Turn isn't exactly a remake either, but, like I said it IS a story that's been done almost to death.
In the end, it cannot be a great movie. But just a very-well done potboiler that does exactly what it set out to do. So many horror films fail because someone behind the scenes fails to take it seriously, I'm pleased to say that ain't the case with this movie.
Chris Flynn (the always intense looking Desmond Harrington) is a Doctor on his way to an appointment across the other side of the country. A chemical spill and crash on the freeway means 2 hours of waiting in traffic and being late. Keen to avoid this, Chris takes a dirt road along Bear Mountain hoping to cut back onto the freeway some miles ahead of the jam. I bet he wishes he didn't.
This wrong turn causes him to smash into an already wasted people carrier. The owners are a bunch of mountain bikers who have had their tires shredded by barb-wire lain by apparent hillbillies.
Chris and three others (Eliza Dushku, Jeremy Sisto and the very annoying Emmanuelle Chriqui) decide to walk to the nearest phone while a moronic and deserving-to-die boyfriend and girlfriend (Kevin Zegers and Lindy Booth, who also met a similar fate in Dawn of the Dead) stay behind to guard the cars.
That couple don't last very long and the only dwelling the quartet stumble upon is the disgusting house of a bunch of ferocious, inbred, cannibalistic mountain men. It's filled with the stolen belongings of people they've already massacred, but no one picks up on this until the men suddenly return.
It's clear from the outset who's going to live and who's going to die. Chris is strong-willed and level-headed and responds to intense situations with logic and cunning, while most of the others do stupid things and do all but paint a bullseye on their forehead.
Shot and directed with an atmospheric color pallet, a fair amount of tension, some grisly kills and lots of quick, nervous cuts (without turning into confusion), Wrong Turn succeeds where most other wannabe horrors that fall into the same sub-genre fail. In the post-Scream world horror movies were all about irony and smart-ass. Wrong Turn wisely includes neither. Currently horror movies are all about remakes, with one remake coming out every other week. Wrong Turn isn't exactly a remake either, but, like I said it IS a story that's been done almost to death.
In the end, it cannot be a great movie. But just a very-well done potboiler that does exactly what it set out to do. So many horror films fail because someone behind the scenes fails to take it seriously, I'm pleased to say that ain't the case with this movie.