Wrong Turn belongs to the branch of the horror movie family known as the "slasher." Armed with this information, we know the movie will have a young, attractive cast, a crazed killer or killers, lots of blood & a victorious hero/heroine at the end. Everything else is just dressing. There are also a few requirements for watching a slasher (besides a strong stomach), the primary one being that we ignore everything "common sense" we ever learned. Common sense has no place in a slasher flick, so suspend your sense of disbelief & settle down to watch the, er, fur fly.
After a brief introductory set up that lets us know all is not well in the hills of West Virginia, we meet our hero, Chris Flynn (Desmond Harrington) tearing down the road in a classic blue Mustang. He's in a hurry, he's late, he's impatient & he doesn't care who knows it, which tends to make other people less than helpful. He gets off the Interstate to avoid a traffic jam & stops at a gas station of sorts along a dirt road. Casting a quick glance at an ancient map & a Pepto Bismal swigging local (possum CAN be very greasy), he decides to take a shortcut through the mountains. (Now, remember what I said about that sense of disbelief.)
Driving like a maniac he runs into (literally) five strangers stuck in an RV with flat tires. Seems these people thought they would cheer up our depressed heroine, Jessie Burlingame (Eliza Dusku) with a short jaunt in the woods. Scott (Jeremy Sisto) & Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui) are engaged to be married & Evan (Kevin Zeggers) & Francine (Lindy Booth) are ... well, something ... besides pot heads, I mean. (Always keep your wits about you when lost in the woods) Leaving Evan & Francine behind with the damaged vehicles, the other four trot off in search of a working telephone or civilization of some sort, whichever comes first.
I have to admit that I enjoy the occasional slasher flick, they're like car wrecks on the highway, you don't want to look but you can't look away. Wrong Turn does very well with what it has, but there's only so much corn I can eat. The first hard-to-swallow bite is Carly yanking Scott's leash by telling him that if he ever wants to get in her pants again, he'll agree with whatever she wants. Puh-leeze. This supposedly cute bit is so old & tired that it could have participated in the original Hatfield-McCoy feud. Should have been cut.
The second hard-to-swallow bite is from Carly also (her character gets more character as the film rolls along). She needs to find a bathroom, she has to pee! Right now! (This is why your parents always made you go to the bathroom before a long car trip). I can only assume that she is one of those overly prissy girls who never roughed it in the woods or attended a kegger (keg party) in a field. And when she does finally find her bathroom, one look at that mess would have had me heading for the high grass, maple leaf in hand.
But maybe I'm being overly picky. What the movie does, it does very well, employing some good dialogue (Scott: Anyone remember a little movie called "Deliverance?") & utilizing some new variations on the old slasher premises. The mountain scenery is breath-taking, the cabin is wonderfully disgusting & the mountain men are made up to the height of ugliness & deformity.
Dusku & Harrington are a little too wooden & stolid for my taste, but maybe they're in shock. Chriqui is annoying early on but gets much better & more believeable towards the end. Jeremy Sisto is natural & engaging & looks great in shorts. That alone would have had me watching the movie but it does fine on it's own.
Overall, I would give this movie a GOOD. It's representative of its genre but has some very original twists & turns. Would I watch it again? Sure. Even though I know how it ends, it's still wonderful to watch movies like this on a dark & stormy night. It's amazing how much you can scare yourself silly and ... HEY! ... Who turned out the lights? Hello? Is somebody there?
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