I miss enough movies AT the movies, that we end up renting a lot of DVDs; this one being no exception. Sometimes I’m glad we spent only $3 instead of $16 (two adult movie tickets); this one being no exception.

It wasn’t terrible. After all, it DID keep me awake until the end…, which may not seem a major accomplishment… unless you know me. I have the world record for having seen the first half of movies… and never seeing the second half. You see, I live with a movie critic… so every night is “movie night”. Since I get up around 5:00 in the morning, my ability to stay awake night after night is severely limited.

And yes, I mentioned I live with a movie critic. That makes it hard for me to feel justified in even THINKING about writing an opinion on a movie. But then… maybe this can be considered the “I know nothing about movies, but I am still entitled to opinions” opinion.

So, the movie. By the time all the main characters are introduced and we get a glimpse of their personalities (and I use the term loosely), you KNOW who’s expendable and who’s gonna make it.

That, I’d say, was my biggest disappointment with the movie. No surprises. Oh, lots of JUMP SCARES… but no real surprises.

The only thing I predicted that didn’t pan out was more of a love interest in two of the characters. Buy hey, they may already be working on a Wrong Turn 2... particularly in light of the (again) predictable last 30 seconds of the movie.

The IMDB plot line reads: “A carload of six teens find themselves trapped in the woods of West Virginia, hunted down by cannibalistic mountain men grossly disfigured through generations of in-breeding.” That’s not exactly true, as it was two cars… one with five teens in it and the other with remaining person… teen? No… adult? Sort of.

That “sort of” adult is played by Desmond Harrington. No one *I* recognize. And I don’t think my movie-watching partner quite agreed with me when I referred to Des as a “poor man’s Tom Cruise”. Hey, I call ‘em like I see ‘em.

The reason he didn’t look familiar to me was that his list of film credits are movies I’ve never seen (Riding in Cars with Boys, Ghost Ship, etc.).

I thought I recognized the main girl, Eliza Dushku, but only slightly. Apparently she’s been in some “Buffy-related” thing. Shrug.

Back to the movie, though… the plot is pretty much as it says up there. These cannibalistic, in-bred mountain men do pretty much what you’d expect cannibalistic, in-bred mountain men to do. And teens running for their lives pretty much do what you’d expect teens running for their lives to do. Meaning mostly that all these people do what you’d expect them to do in a movie—what you’ve seen a thousand actors before them do in similar movies.

So why’d I stay awake until the end? A) It wasn’t an abominable movie. B) I wanted to confirm my suspicions (about who lives and who dies). C) I wanted to see if they could pull anything out of their hat at the last minute to make me go: “Hooray, I wasn’t expecting that!” D) I’d had some caffeine about 3 hours previous.

The special effects (aka “gore”) were good, I thought… but in this day and age, there’s little reason not to have decent effects.

The music was… was there music in this movie? (Sorry, inside joke.)

So… West Virginia, eh. At some point in the movie, I thought I heard a John Denver song in my head… praising the virtues of the state. Of course I hear while also hearing whispered echoes in my memory: “We are NEVER moving to West Virginia.”

The movie was directed by Rob Schmidt, and written by Alan McElroy (Halloween 4, Spawn, etc). These names don’t mean much to me.

All in all, an okay movie to watch on a night with nothing better to do, and just so’s you can say, “Yeah, I saw it.”


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older