Wrong Turn (2003)
Directed by Rob Schmidt
Chris crashes into a carload of other young people, and the group of stranded motorists is soon lost in the woods of West Virginia, where they're hunted by three cannibalistic mountain men who are grossly disfigured by generations of inbreeding.
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15 films that influenced Wrong Turn
What critics say influenced Wrong Turn
A movie about inbred redneck hillbillies should go in one of two directions: it should either be an exercise in cult-movie camp, or it should be a modern day version of Deliverance (whose title one character is foolish enough to invoke at a certain point).
Broad nods to “Deliverance” and to the original “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” abound, but they just make the movie worse--there are no comparisons.
In his DVD commentary with Dushku and Harrington, Schmidt repeatedly insists that Wrong Turn has a seventies sensibility, and like the film itself (in which Jeremy Sisto's character rhetorically asks of his companions, "Haven't you seen Deliverance?"), the director acknowledges its sources.
It's just possible that McElroy thought that because he actually stuck in a dialogue reference to John Boorman's Deliverance that his script would both look less like a splatter-film rip-off of that movie and attain some weight by virtue of association.
The kids invoke Deliverance by name at one point, but in its stripped down narrative thrust and its level of sustained suspense, the film it most vividly recalls is Walter Hill�s masterful bayou thriller Southern Comfort.
There’s a needlessly blatant “Deliverance” reference which winks and nods to the audience too much.
…does suffer from a kind of cinematic inbreeding, taking a major inspiration from a bizarre genre of 1970’s shockers like John Boorman’s Deliverance, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eaten Alive, as well as Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and it’s sequel.
The kids invoke Deliverance by name at one point, but in its stripped down narrative thrust and its level of sustained suspense, the film it most vividly recalls is Walter Hill�s masterful bayou thriller Southern Comfort.
Even before those "Scream" movies, we knew the rules, even if nobody said them out loud.
The leads are very good and the film is refreshingly free of Scream-like smartarsery.
There's no tongue-in-cheek here, either, no sly "Scream" humor, just straight-out blood and gore for the sake of straight-out blood and gore.
Kevin Williamson gave the genre a lift with Scream, making horror movies self-referential and cool, and also a lot of fun, but his screenplays also tend to be cute--he’s like the John Hughes of horror films.
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Wrong Turn, co-produced and featuring effects work by Oscar-winner Stan Winston (who also, let’s not forget, had a hand in the Andy Kaufman/Bernadette Peters robot love story from hell, Heartbeeps , way back in ’81) begins promisingly, but soon falls prey to achingly obvious genre tropes and rote, hack ’n’ slash bloodletting.
This was already tired stuff when cult fave Sleepaway Camp came out in 1983, and it’s downright comatose by now.
We quickly learn that couples Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui, "On the Line") and Scott (Jeremy Sisto, "Angel Eyes") and Francine (Lindy Booth, "American Psycho 2") and Evan (Kevin Zegers, proving there is life after starring in the "Air Bud" movies) are soothing buddy Jessie's (Eliza Dushku, "City by the Sea") broken heart with a camping trip, and Chris neatly completes the coupling.
From Desmond Harrington and Eliza Dushku�s pathetic attempts to sustain horror momentum to Kevin "Air Bud" Zegers� brief appearance in the beginning of the film, Wrong Turn offers bad acting abound.
Accordingly, the likes of Jeremy Sisto ("Angel Eyes," "Clueless"), Emmanuelle Chriqui ("On the Line," "Snow Day"), Kevin Zegers (the "Air Bud" films) and Lindy Booth ("American Psycho 2," "Detroit Rock City") are barely differentiated and have no chance of emotionally connecting with the viewers.
Steven Spielberg has been quoted as saying that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the best movies ever made (and he indeed hired director Tobe Hooper to make Poltergeist for him), and what I think he was responding to was the willingness of a filmmaker to just let go.
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“Wrong Turn” makes Rob Zombie’s similarly disorganized but unbelievably more interesting “House Of 1000 Corpses” look like “Citizen Kane” in comparison.
Director Rob Schmidt ("Crime and Punishment in Suburbia") and screenwriter Alan B. McElroy ("Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever") start off on the right foot by delivering what appears to be an homage to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" set in the locale of "The Blair Witch Project," both apt material for times when terrorists with motives incomprehensible to most take innocent lives in commonplace situations with sudden finality.