WRONG TURN (2003)

Directed By: Rob Schmidt 
Written By: Alan McElroy 
Cinematography By: John S. Bartley 
Editor: Michael Ross 


Cast: Eliza Dushku, Desmond Herrington, Emanuelle Chiriqui, Jeremy Sisto, Lindy Booth, Kevin Zegers 


Six people find themselves trapped in the woods of West Virginia, hunted down by cannibalistic mountain men grossly disfigured through generations of in-breeding.

What one would usually complain about is made fun here. The characters you hardly have any backstory on. So that it puts you on par with our lead character, a doctor traveling the backroads to get his residency started. He happens upon a group of college kids trying to go camping and as he gets to know them so does the audience but not before too long the. Slowly they are hunted down and slaughtered until the last 20 minutes becomes a battle for survival with booby traps.

The film seems inspired by THE HILLS HAVE EYES. So much so that when the reboot of hills had a sequel. It could have easily been a sequel in one of this films franchise only instead of the woods being a desert.

This film is a bunch of familiar cliches. It at the time it was kind of a breath of fresh air. As it had the familiar strokes but added some different elements though minor were needed. Even though the cast is young. It’s not a bunch of crappy teenagers instead we gist attractive characters in their 20’s most are together in a group but another is a random guy stranded. Also for a film aimed at a younger audience where the violence was often PG-13 rated. This film offers violence actually more like gore that is inventive and brutal and is rather quick than torturous.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel though if you are. Horror fan it’s a breath of fresh air as it is a fun horror film and not in the comedic sense.

The film is exploitive, rigid, gory, disgusting, thrilling and more b-movie fun. What makes this film strong is that for a film taking place in such a wide open space. It is kind of contained especially with it’s cast. So there is a certain number of victims as we watch them fall.

The creatures were designed by Stan Winston. So they are very impressive with old school practical special effects. The director Rob Schmidt makes a good choice that we never fully see the mutants just glimpses and clippings of how they became that way. Kind of like jaws where we build them up in a way and slowly become terrified of their appearances when they happen. More out of creative reasons.

There isn’t much to this movie it’s not deep and it doesn’t try to be it is merely entertaining and fun.

Strangely though this film bombed at the box office. Which it didn’t deserve to, Where I remember only seeing posters but no actual other advertisements. This must have become a hit on dvd as it birthed a horror franchise. That had a built in audience. That I will admit Even i was a fan of up until around the third or the fourth. Maybe it was the title or at least the recognizable cast in this first film or maybe even it was obvious the villains of the film had enough potential for another film.

The only really noteworthy cast member is Eliza Dushku who was running high off of her fame from the television show BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and the hit movie BRING IT ON. She is more the co-lead but the only real name cast me member at the time as well as being on all the advertisements and posters.

Though eventually this movie spawned a franchise of straight to Dvd movies. This is the only one of the movies that doesn’t have sex or nudity in the film and the only one that made it to theaters.


GRADE: C+