WRONG TURN (2003) Double-bladed axes are the best kind Inbred redneck hillbillies are one of the last groups in North America unprotected by the smothering blanket of political correctness - probably because they're too busy fucking their sisters to get organized and protest. I seem to recall one or two West Virginians voicing their hurt feelings at how their state was portrayed in this movie. Equipped with English speaking skills, I doubt they were quite the type of West Virginian the makers of Wrong Turn had in mind. Yep, Wrong Turn marks the return of hillbilly horror - for one movie anyway, though I hear a remake of The Hills Have Eyes is in the works. Backwoods freaks prey upon city folk ("city folk" being, for the purposes of these films, anyone who has what could be considered neighbors). Axes, shotguns, bows & arrows (one of these guys is clearly a skilled fletcher). Bear traps, barbed-wire tripwires. Yee-haw! We don't actually see any cannibalism, though it's somewhat implied, what with all that dismembering (really, really disgusting sound effects). Only one of these guys appears to have enough teeth to chew flesh though. The script by Alan B. McElroy is...well, largely beside the point for a movie like this. Written with a bit of a sense of humor in mind, it's a pretty weak sense of humor (example: "It's like the garage sale from hell!" Any one-liner that depends upon the words "from hell" at the end automatically sucks.). Elsewhere is featured a sob story about what all these young 'uns are doing way out in the woods, which ends with "...and now they're all dead!" and the other person saying "It's not your fault. It's not your fault." Bad, bad, bad. Not like you couldn't figure out these two would be the last left alive; nobody in a horror movie who starts off in a couple lives. The actors do what they're told and have no opportunities to rise above the material they're given, though Desmond Harrington does get to play like he's got balls of steel by volunteering to go first for every insanely dangerous escape. Eliza Dushku's sixty-pound eyelids do her acting for her when she's supposed to be sad later on, Lindy Booth is awfully cute as the freaks' first on-screen victim (her and her boyfriend smoke weed and have sex...guess which couple gets killed first), Emmanuelle Chriqui is Panicky Chick, and...uh, there are two other guys, but who cares about the guys? Only the men playing the three freaks ("Three-Finger", "Sawtooth", and "One-Eye" - you figure it out) much get to stretch out, splendidly embodying these horrible genetic dead-ends. No, a movie like this depends on execution and detail. How freaky are the freaks? How squalid is their home? When people get killed, will the audience point and laugh, or cover their eyes? The direction by Rob Schmidt and nasty effects (Stan fuckin' Winston, baby!) goes some ways towards making up for that silly script. The freaks look hideous, their cabin is filled with grotesqueries big and small (jar full of dentures, eeeeeewwwwwwww). The murders are gruesome, a little show-stopping (one that happens in a tree - wow!) and are never played for laughs. A little re-thinking at the script level and Wrong Turn could've been a big winner. The locations (filmed in Ontario) are great, and I liked that so much of the action takes place in broad daylight, though there are a few CGI trees and such and I would've thought West Virginia would've been a little more mountainous. This is the kind of movie that demands an absence of high expectations - as does so much in this genre, doesn't it? It won't keep you up at night, but it should keep you glued to the TV while it's playing. BACK TO THE W's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE