Wrong Turn (2003) Directed by Rob Schmidt
I feel like this movie is kind of forgotten, or at least overshadowed by the ten thousand straight to DVD sequels it launched. It has been forever since I have seen this movie; I think I was probably in 10th grade right after it was released on DVD. I saw it in a two pack at walmart with the second one for like $5 so I figured I’d at least get my money’s worth out of it. I popped it into the playstation, grabbed a seat on the couch with the dog and escaped into the word of inbred cannibalistic hillbillies from West Virginia for the next 84mins.
Wrong turn starts with a couple rock climbing when the guy gets murdered. The girl sees the entire thing, while blood drips down towards her. Suddenly, she is being dragged up the cliff by her climbing rope and freaks out. She fights to get free until she finally just cuts the rope and falls. The girl jumps up and tries to run away when she trips over barbed wire and is dragged back into the woods.
Then we meet Chris, attempting to drive through the mountains of West Virginia but the road is blocked due to a chemical spill. He pulls a u turn and goes to a gas station, where he meets an old guy that has like one tooth in his mouth. The old guy basically refuses to help him find an alternate route. Chris sees a map and decides to take a side dirt road. Chris peels out of the gas station and turns down the side road. While driving the idiot is fiddling with some cd that fell out of his cd player, then sees a dead deer on the road. Apparently to Chris a dead deer is distracting as hell, I guess he’s not from Michigan. While staring at the entertaining deer, Chris plows into an SUV thus destroying his awesome Mustang…idiot.
Chris gets out of the car and a group of college aged people walk up and ask if he’s all right. They explain that they broke down by running over barbed wire that was strewn across the road. The group consists of Carly, her fiancé Scott, Evan, his girlfriend Francine, and Jessie. Jessie explains that the wire was tied to a tree so it wasn’t an accident, just someone being a dick I guess. Its worth mentioning that Jessie is played by Eliza Dushku…remember when she was a thing? Seriously what happened to her? Anyway…Jessie, Carly, Chris, and Scott leave to go find help. Evan goes to investigate a noise, because this is a slasher movie so he dies obviously. Francine goes in to check on him, because again it’s a slasher movie. She only finds his shoe and an ear, and then she’s quickly killed by barbed wire.
Back to the other group now, the stumble across a shack in the woods and they go in to see if someone can help them. They see all different kinds of human remains and try to escape, but the mountain men return and they hide. The cannibalistic mountain men bring in Francine’s corpse (that you can see breathing…nice) and they start eating her. Apparently eating slutty college girls that don’t wear bras is tiring work, because the three freaks take a nap. While they’re sleeping the other kids slowly escape the house. One of them wakes up, I hear his name is Saw Tooth. Chris takes off into a field and gets shot in the leg. Scott saves Chris by distracting the cannibals. Carly and Jessie steal an old tow truck from the cannibals’ field of vehicles and take off. I have to stop a second and say that Carly is wearing some weird light blue top that she thinks is a sports bra because she’s only wearing that, I mean she’s blasting nips the whole time. Chris joins them in the truck and they search for Scott. They call his name and he tries running to them, until he’s shot three times with arrows and dies.
They take off and find an old watchtower and radio for help. The cannibals find them and set fire to the tower. The three jump out of a window into a nearby tree. Three Finger quickly traps Carly and he buries and axe into her face, pretty awesome kill, I actually rewound it and watched it again. Chris and Jessie escape and spend the night in a waterfall. The cannibals find them the next morning; kidnap Jessie and head back to the cabin. Chris finds a police officer and tries to tell him what happened, when suddenly the office is struck in the eye with an arrow. A cannibal takes the truck and drives off. Chris hitches a ride under the truck, which I’m sure, isn’t possible, I mean who has that kind of stamina?
The truck reaches the cabin where Jessie is tide up and gagged. They are about to kill her when Chris barrels in with the truck thus killing One-Eye. Chris unties Jessie and they injury the two remaining cannibals. Chris grabs their gun and shoots the gas tank on the truck blowing up the cannibals and the cabin. They hop into the tow truck and drive off. They come to the gas station and Chris rips down the map from earlier in the movie. The credits are interrupted showing that Three Finger survived and he kills a deputy.
This movie gets a bad rep sometimes, I’m not sure it really deserves. Sure the idea is kind of a rip off of The Hills Have Eyes, but hey…Friday the 13th was basically a play off from Halloween and that was awesome! I’d say its better than other slasher movies of this era. It has some pretty cool scenes and kills, like Carly’s death and the girl getting pulled up the cliff at the beginning. Eliza Dushku is alright in this film, but I feel like she relied on Chris too much to be a “final girl.” She has always walked the line between hot and okay with me, sometimes she’s sexy other times she’s just average. If you want to see her when she’s hot, watch the New Guy when she’s trying on clothes for DJ Qualls! The cannibals are cool, grotesquely disfigured inbred mountain men. Phew say that ten times fast! One part that bothered me, was the fact that Chris was shot in the leg but had no problem climbing a big ladder, jumping from tree to tree and running. It seemed his injury disappeared until the last scene where he hobbles up and rips the map down. Really that’s my only complaint with the movie, it’s a solid slasher especially for the 2000s. I’d give this movie a solid B, it is fun but it doesn’t do anything that didn’t exist before. If you’re a fan of backwoods cannibal movies, it’s a definite must see. If you’re a fan of Eliza Dushku, which I assume she probably has a following, I don’t know, but yeah watch it!
