Wrong Turn Reviewed on Blu-ray
By Bill Warren
"Wrong Turn" is tense and well-directed, and was successful enough to produce two straight-to-video sequels, which seem to have just replayed more or less the same story. Which would make them very blurred carbons, since the original film itself is a blend of "The Hills Have Eyes," a touch of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and a dollop of "Deliverance" (which is acknowledged onscreen by one of the characters).
As directed by Rob Schmidt, who's still working at about the same level, the film makes good use of scenic locations (eastern Canada standing in for West Virginia), and tells a simple story. The idea was to make a 1970s-style horror movie; in that, they've succeeded; it's so simple there aren't any plot holes since there's only barely a plot at all. It's sketchy and schematic, the kind of rural horror movie imagined only by city dwellers, who seem to think that if you get more than five miles from a freeway, anywhere in the country, you're going to be slaughtered by blood-thirsty yokels.
Writer Alan McElroy doesn't bother to provide characterizations for his actors, who are pretty much left to their own devices. All we know about Chris (Desmond Harrinton), the lead, is that he's an impatient medical student, on his way to an important (but unspecified) appointment. He's on a four-lane highway in West Virginia when a traffic jam leads him to take a side road, the Wrong Turn of the title. We're expected to believe that out of all that stalled traffic, he's the only guy to have gone the way he did.
On a side road off the side road, he glances away for a moment and slams into another car, parked in the middle of the road. We're expected to believe that on this long straight stretch, he wouldn't have seen that car before being momentarily distracted. But something had to get the story started. The other car was stopped because a strip of barbed wire across the road blew out their tires. (Everyone is attractive, everyone is in their mid-20s.)
Bossy, take-charge Jessie (Eliza Dushku) insists Chris accompany her, Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and Carly's b.f Scott (Jeremy Sisto, currently on "Law and Order") to hike off to hopefully find a service station. Oddly, they find a hillybilly shack instead of the nearly-deserted service station Chris himself stopped at earlier. Back at the cars, Evan (Kevin Zegers) disappears, and his g.f. Francine (Lindy Booth) is garroted through the mouth (impressive but depressing makeup) by deformed hillbillies.
At that shack, the others find grisly evidence that the residents are cannibals who've been slaughtering passersby for what seems to have been five or six decades, judging from the age of the cars stacked up near the shack and out in a field not far away (a field with no roads near it). We're expected to believe that these creeps, all of whom are hideously deformed, have been doing this less than 50 miles from a city without anyone ever noticing a thing. Or at least these inbred degenerates are far smarter than local cops, and smarter than every one of their victims down through the years. In "Hills Have Eyes," a similar premise was slightly more believable because the incestuous, cannibalistic family was way out in the southwestern desert.
When the returning hillibillies begin cutting up Francine's body, the four newcomers run away. One soon falls victim to who has to be the greatest archer since Robin Hood: he gets off three arrows zipping unerringly through a thick forest; all three plunge into the victim's back (one protrudes from his chest) before the guy even has a chance to fall down.
The three survivors find a Forest Service fire watchtower--a tower lower than the old-growth forest around it, a tower with no road nearby (I've been to many of these towers; all had roads ending at them), a tower abandoned for years but with still-working glow sticks and a radio with still-charged batteries. When the hillbillies arrive, they set fire to the watchtower, so our heroes leap out into the forest. At night. Those who made the movie are clearly unconcerned with any thoughts of credibility; they clearly believe human bodies can impressively survive plunging thirty feet downward into a thick forest, caroming off peculiarly-level branches. You try it. I'll wait here.
One of the producers was late makeup king Stan Winston, clearly drawn to the material for the opportunities it provided his workers. In one of the trivial featurettes, he declares the movie features "one of the great decapitations." Perhaps so. But it's also so grotesque as to invite both disbelief and disgust. And I LIKE gory movies.
Initially, it seemed as though studios were releasing their best and/or most recent films on Blu-ray; now, it seems any damned thing will get this treatment, even third-rate thrillers like "Wrong Turn." (And "Wrong Turn 2," for that matter.) Actually, the movie is very well photographed by John S. Bartley; it has depth and texture, and is consistently well-composed. I'm sure there are solid technical reasons why greens work so well in high definition, but all that's important to me is that, in fact, they do work well. As this movie is set entirely out in the piney wilderness, it looks great in high definition, with every needle and cone sharply visible. Of course, this means that the frequent and extreme gore scenes also pop off the screen.
On the other hand, despite Winston's producing the film to give his makeup mavens plenty of work, the makeups are only glimpsed in the movie; the deformed creeps are usually hidden behind branches, or deep in darkness, or we are looking over their shoulders.
Desmond Harrington... Chris Flynn
Eliza Dushku... Jessie Burlingame
Emmanuelle Chriqui... Carly
Jeremy Sisto... Scott
Kevin Zegers... Evan
Lindy Booth... Francine
