Détour mortel

What's worse than a leather-faced madman chasing you through the bush with a chainsaw? How about three!!

`Wrong Turn' stars Desmond Harrington as Chris Finn, a man who is late for a very important interview. Finn takes a back country road to avoid a traffic jam and ends up involved in a car accident with three debutantes (Eliza Dushku, Lindy Booth and Emmanuelle Chriqui) and their boyfriends (Jeremy Sisto and Kevin Zegers). The group splits up as they try to find some help. Unbeknownst to them, they are being stalked by an unspeakable horror. Living in the woods around the crash is a family of cannibalistic mountain men who are overtly grotesque from generations of incest. Before the group knows it, they are in a fight for their very lives.

`Wrong Turn' was in one word an utter shock to the system. There hasn't been a film this gory, grotesque and chilling in a very long time. Not since the 1970's `Texas Chainsaw Massacre' has a horror film such as this been made. The best way to describe the experience is that if you took 2001's `Joy Ride' and `Jeepers Creepers' added 1972's `Deliverance' then threw them all in a blender. You may come up with `Wrong Turn'.

The tension in this film is harrowing and relentless as it bats you back and forth. You are exhausted and maybe even queasy when you come out of the theatre. But if you love horror films then you probably have an ear to ear grin as well.

I really liked some of the early editing of this film by director Rob Schmidt, who allows the scares and shocks to come with brilliant accuracy. I also liked how Schmidt barely shows the mountain men throughout the film. The parts we do see are horrific but the filmmaker relies heavily on the chase and shock than on the gore. Schmidt could have easily dived down the gore shoot to hell but he made a wise choice that works in spades.

It's the film's harrowing tension and atmospheric pursuit that overshadows the young stars that make up the cast. Dushku is strong and emulates some of her `Buffy the Vampire Slayer' character, Faith in her portrayal here. Dushku loves to play debutantes with edge and her character here has a lot of it. I wasn't extremely familiar with Desmond Harrington before this film but he plays a good leading man. The rest of the cast play typical generic 20-somethings from the horror film franchises of old. I have always liked Lindy Booth but she has nothing to play with here and the same is goes for Jeremy Sisto. But come on, this isn't exactly an intelligently written and detailed drama.

I liked `Wrong Turn' purely because of its shock value and its no holds barred return to classic horror. It is always in your face and it doesn't let go till the credits. This film isn't for the faint of heart. What a rush! (3.5 out of 5) So Says the Soothsayer.

Rating: ** out of ****

Wrong Turn seemingly has all the ingredients necessary for an effective slasher: a good setting and decent premise, a very attractive and likable cast, memorable make-up and gore effect, and a refreshingly unironic tone that reminds us of the days when old-fashioned horror didn't rely on self-conscious humor to pass for entertainment value. In that manner, Wrong Turn is actually a little nostalgic, not unlike the rest of the recent batch of backwoods horror flicks (Cabin Fever, House of 1000 Corpses, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake).

But aside from two solid setpieces, the movie rarely fulfills its (admittedly limited) potential. The script matters little in this subgenre, but there's almost no plot after the ill-fated teens arrive at the mountain men's cabin. This is about twenty-five minutes into the film, after we've already dispensed with the obligatory character intros (basically: 3 hot chicks and 3 hunky, but also surprisingly personable guys) and whatever reasons they have for being stranded in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia.

Everything after that is typical cat-and-mouse filler, the killers (three inbred, cannibalistic hillbillies) searching for their prey while our protagonists run and hide behind trees. There's very little in the way of suspense, namely because it's so obvious who's going to live and who's going to die and in what order. And because the cast is so small, you can't even enjoy a particularly large body count (half the main cast is killed off less than forty minutes into the picture).

Wrong Turn is also missing much of what makes slasher movies fun to watch: explicit nudity and the occasional bit of gratuitous sex. With such an attractive cast (Emmanuelle Chriqui is cute, and Eliza Dushku and especially Lindy Booth are total hotties), the movie regrettably skimps on the goods. Such a complaint probably wouldn't matter if the characters were better developed, but despite a talented cast, the most interesting aspect character-wise is noting how different a couple Lindy Booth and Kevin Zegers played in Dawn of the Dead.

As for the rest of the cast, Desmond Harrington is a solid actor, but does little more than run, grunt, and dive headfirst into every dangerous stunt (his volunteering for every dangerous move actually makes him pretty likable even when we question his logic). Eliza Dushku simply coasts on her looks (and proves that all hottie TV actresses are destined to play a big screen scream queen at least once in their lives), while Emmanuelle Chriqui just shrieks her way through her part. Standing out a little is Jeremy Sisto, who infuses a bit of humor into an otherwise very disposable role.

The forest is something of a disappointment, as well. With a potentially excellent setting at his disposal, director Rob Schmidt fails to generate any creepy atmosphere in an environment where you'd think atmosphere would almost come naturally (to be fair, a lot of horror movies also seem to have this problem; the last time I saw a forest setting utilized perfectly was in 2003's terrifically frightening Dead End).

Despite the fact I've done little more than harp on the film, there's no denying that the middle half-hour is occasionally entertaining. There's a semi-suspenseful scene set in a vehicular junkyard (finally, a little variety in setting, huh?) and another effective sequence set inside a watchtower that segues to an exciting chase atop the branches of some very large trees. The murders are too sparse, given the small cast, but they're gruesome and memorable, and thankfully not as relentlessly cruel as the deaths in Cabin Fever, but boast just the right touch of menace and hard-edged violence.

The three hillbilly killers aren't quite as successful as the gore; in fact, seeing less of them would have been appreciated, considering their grotesque appearance almost crosses into the realm of self-parody. Even The X-Files knew better than that.

Anyway, whatever momentum the middle half-hour built up comes crashing down in the final minutes, with the film actually closing out with an explosion, surely a sign of desperation on the part of the screenwriter if he can't come up with any brighter ideas in a slasher (I was, in fact, about to give the movie a ** 1/2 until the climax). Overall, this is mildly recommended to slasher fans or anyone who wants to gawk at Dushku for a little over an hour. Wrong Turn at least has its heart set in the right place, which is more than can be said for most slashers these days.

I probably hadn't seen this movie since it first came out over 20 years ago. It's a rainy summer Sunday evening and I could not think of a better movie to follow-up the classic National Lampoon's Vacation!

Wrong Turn is your standard backwoods, hillbilly, cannibal slasher that has been done several times over. The movie really doesn't add anything new, but it does provide some good kills, some good gore, and just good times! It's a fun ride with some suspensful moments that leave you as the viewer wondering what exactly you would do in situations such as this.

The bottom line is that if you are a fan of this sub-genre of horror, or if you have never seen it before, give Wrong Turn a shot, I don't think that you will be disappointed.

It was entertaining and engaging as much as it was tired and expected. Acting and soundtrack were irritating in some parts of the movie. Very cheesy and cliche but will certainly appeal to many as an entertaining backwoods slasher.

I usually don't find horror movies to be very scary. I've seen enough of them to know pretty much what's going to happen and when it will happen. They're generally so predictable that they just fail to illicit any kind of emotional response in me whatsoever. "Wrong Turn" is an exception, however. It's one of the rare horror movies that was actually as scary and disturbing to me as it was meant to be.

The plot, which involves six attractive young people being hunted by a family of cannibalistic mountain men, is very straightforward and offers no real surprises to fans of horror movies. As is the case in most of these movies, however, the plot quickly becomes besides the point, and the movie becomes more concerned with trying to frighten and disturb the viewer.

Needless to say, it succeeds. The mountain men prove to be some of the scariest movie killers that I've seen in a long time, probably because the film wastes no time in showing us exactly what they plan to do with their victims (we see this about a half-hour into the movie in a scene that is guaranteed to make at least half of the people who watch it really, really sick). They also manage to be more relentless and even more beyond reason than most horror movie killers; they behave more like wild animals than people.

The acting is considerably better than most movies in this genre. Granted, that's not saying much, but I actually felt more than a little sympathy for the two main characters (Eliza Dushku and the Ray Liotta-looking med student). They behave just like anyone else would in that situation, and they're likable enough and believable enough to make us root for them. I didn't find myself feeling much sympathy for the rest of the cast (they often act like typical slasher movie fodder, especially the two kids who get high and have sex shortly before being murdered), but they're at least more believable than the characters who usually appear in these movies.

Overall, I would have to say that this movie was better than most of the horror movies that have come out lately. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but any fan of horror movies should definitely check it out.