Wrong Turn Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)June 4th, 2003
WRONG TURN
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Rob Schmidt's WRONG TURN is a high quality slasher film. If you can accept an oxymoron-free interpretation of the previous sentence, you're in the movie's target audience. The well cast picture concerns a group of young adults who reluctantly take on a group of hillbilly cannibals in the deep backwoods of West Virginia.
It appears that a century of inbreeding has turned the woods' few residents into a disfigured group of would-be Sasquatches. (The smallest and ugliest of the lot looks like Gollum's grandfather.) The yuppies from the city are no match for these mountain men. No sooner will one of the well dressed kids proclaim that he'll be okay than his body will be chopped up for stew meat.
The film's spectacular images and dramatic sounds tell you that this is a horror picture that wants to be taken as serious cinema. But there's plenty of natural humor along the way so that the movie is never in danger of taking itself too seriously.
Chris (Desmond Harrington) is a new doctor on his way to a job interview when he finds himself in need of a shortcut. Not knowing that dotted lines on a map mean danger, he blasts down the wrong back road with his stereo blaring. Circumstances conspire to have him and a group of strangers, Jessie (Eliza Dushku), Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), Scott (Jeremy Sisto) and others, end up walking the road in order to find assistance. If you think about the actors' salary structure, you can probably guess the order in which Chris's newfound friends will perish.
You're probably already thinking, "DELIVERANCE," but, just in case you missed the similarity, Scott points it out to Carly, his fiancée. "I need to remind you," he says, when she thinks finding a proper bathroom in the middle of nowhere is her most important task, "of a little movie called DELIVERANCE."
Yes, it is pretty predictable, but it's so well done that it's a lot of fun -- if you like to grimace, jump and squirm in the theater.
Well there ever be a WRONG TURN 2? The filmmakers leave no doubt that, if the financial backers come forward, they're eager to do another.
WRONG TURN runs a fast 1:21. It is rated R for "strong violence and gore, some language and drug use" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.
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