After watching this movie, we believe the cable TV blurb describing “Wrong Turn” was 100% on the mark: three inbred cannibals chase a group of teenagers through the Appalachian Mountains. Yeehaw. Sounds like a rip-roaring good time.

Before we even begin, does that last sentence even remotely sound like a good plot? But like small children, we have some masochistic need to find out things the hard way. Like putting our hands in a burning stove to find out it’s um, going to burn us, we willingly suspended our disbelief anyway, fully knowing it would hurt later. (A mistake we will surely make again… and again… and again.)

So let us give you a point-by-point rundown of the film atrocity that is “Wrong Turn.” (We can’t really, in good conscience, call the following “spoilers” because this movie has all the suspense of a Sunday school sermon, but FYI – the particulars are coming and you can’t stop us.)

First of all, what were the people in charge thinking when they decided to slam all the film’s exposition down in the opening credits? This movie is all about three inbred cannibals, but the only reason you know they are inbred cannibals is because numerous darkly lit newspaper clippings are flashed across the screen while they list the names of people who obviously just really needed a paycheck.

In fact, if you were unlucky enough to have to see this in the theater and were, say, stepping out during opening credits to go get popcorn, well then, you might come back to a movie primarily about three really ugly dudes who live together in a shack in the woods and like to eat people. Nowhere in this film were the words “inbred cannibal” ever uttered. They don’t even have names. They’re listed in the credits as “Three Finger,” “Saw-Tooth,” and “One-Eye.” All three were completely interchangeable. We are curious as to whether or not these actors got confused on the set as to which character they were – did the lines get mixed up? Did they have to look down and see who had three fingers? They could’ve just as easily been named “Cannibal 1, 2, and 3” instead and it would have made no difference. Ironically enough, they have more complete names than half the cast members. Eliza Dushku and Desmond Harrington are the only two whose characters were deemed important enough to receive full Christian names.

Putting the above-mentioned directorial blunder aside, let’s examine just why exactly this film made us want to rip our hair out by the roots - and in handfuls.

Does Desmond Harrington look like a doctor to anyone? Maybe if he’s Doogie Howser, MD. We are now collectively under the assumption that the name Desmond Harrington was a clever ruse that Neil Patrick Harris used just to try and get an acting job that didn’t involve the Lifetime Network.

*****PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Desmond Harrington is Neil Patrick Harris. Neil Patrick Harris is Desmond Harrington. The wool has not been pulled over our eyes. Thank you.

Desmond/Neil Patrick otherwise known as character Chris Flynn, in a classically cliché testosterone-induced mistake, decides to take a short cut in the woods of West Virginia. Oh goodie. We’ve never seen that one before! At least when the movie starts with stupid characters doing stupid things, the common moviegoer isn’t suddenly surprised halfway through when the stupid characters are still doing stupid things.

So, Mr. Flynn runs over some barbed wire in the road, then hits a car that is parked out in the middle of nowhere in the Appalachian Mountains (Coincidence? Perhaps. Oh wait, no. He had to meet Eliza Dushku somehow. The other character names are not important because you actually want them to die way before the halfway point except for the one guy from the movie “Clueless” and that’s still iffy.)

Now we have a conundrum. Six people stranded in the middle of nowhere. And what do they do you ask? Well, they disband in classic fashion by leaving two idiots behind with the broken cars. Why? Because we have to have drug use, a gratuitous sex scene and then a gruesome murder that whittles the cast down a bit in a pathetic attempt to get the theater attendees past the thirty-minute mark so they cannot receive a refund.

Four left. Still stupid. We now watch our four “heroes” *cough cough* traipse through the woods and talk about meaningless dribble that does nothing to further the plot. In fact, you can overhear more interesting things being muttered by old ladies in public restrooms over a good tinkle. This makes up a large part of the movie.

Then the foursome takes a “evil-looking abysmal shanty tour in the middle of nowhere” for ten loooong minutes because the obliviously moronic chick in the group has to pee and, even though she was going to originally go camping in the beginning, for some reason she can’t pee behind a tree like normal people would in this situation. Apparently breaking and entering in the house of SATAN is a better alternative.

Insert a completely overdone and obvious attempt to show proof via myriad camera shots that the inhabitants have been purposely stranding travelers for a long time (inbred cannibals need their protein too so they can grow up to become big, strong inbred cannibals.)

It is necessary to mention that this must be the homage to “The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre” either that or they just had a really low budget and borrowed a set. Everything was so similar that we half-expected Matthew McConaughey to burst out through a door and plop his mechanical leg down on the table with a creepy grin.

It would’ve been scarier than this movie.

Alright, let’s speed things up a bit: the good doctor Howser finds a fridge full of human organs and one of the original friends gets her leg hacked off in a scene that lasts way too long. The group finally figures out that things are “not good.” Apparently something is amiss in Appalachia. They run away. The disfigured inbred cannibals chase them, sometimes laughing like they escaped from Barnum and Bailey, which just further sucks the potential suspense from the film like a starving leech. Are scary movies supposed to make people burst out laughing at the antagonists?

A special note must be made about the writer and/or director’s penchant for people getting their heads cut off at the mouth – makes us wonder if he got all of his inspiration from “Final Destination 2” and its cheesy overuse of decapitations.

The rest of the film doesn’t even have to be watched. The normal humans run while the mongoloid freaks chase them. Everyone dies but two, the love interests and the smarter ones, further promoting the ideal of survival of the fittest being absolute truth.

The only one touching, halfway redeeming or well-written scene comes when Eliza and Doogie spend the night under a waterfall and she cries about her guilt over her friends getting eaten. Dushku is the only one who could pull this scene off. The other people’s acting capabilities in this film end at screaming, running and dying.

This movie was rated ‘R’ because how can a scary movie have a PG-13 rating? It defies the laws of nature. It can’t possibly be rated ‘R’ for being anything close to the vicinity of “scary, suspenseful or frightening.” R stands for “Rue.” We rued the day we watched this and are sure the actors rued the day they accepted their parts.

Ninety minutes was a long time for us to subject ourselves to this. It reaffirms the fact that, if you serve up cold doggy poo on a pretty plate, some poor sap (us) will eat it.

Fine. We’ll eat it. But we won’t have seconds. So there. Ha.

Manda’s Final Thought: I’ve seen a good many bad scary movies in my time and I just shelve them all away in my brain as learning experiences and inspiration. However, never have I watched a scary movie and wanted a character to die so badly as I wanted the character Carly to die. In fact, I had to look up her character’s name in IMDB, because I simply refer to her as “the stupid b*tch.” That’s right. And about twenty times throughout the movie, I said (both to myself and out loud) “smack the stupid b*tch. Or kill her. Or at least leave her there in the woods to die like she begs.” If it was me, I’d consider her dead weight. If she begged me to leave her there I’d do it without question. She might slow down the three inbred cannibals and quench their appetite for a while (although not for long, because the actress was all boobs, no meat. She’d probably be a bit bony and dry). My major qualm with this movie: THE STUPID B*TCH DID NOT DIE SOON ENOUGH. I rejoiced when the top half of her head was chopped off.

Liss’s Final Thought: If a moral can be taken away from this movie, I believe it is this: inbred people are really strong, intelligent, cunning and impervious to death. All those silly thoughts that being inbred would make a person weaker and less resistant are pure pish posh. Yes, pish posh.

Also, eating human flesh, not green vegetables, makes a person grow to be a strong and capable adult. Yo’ momma lied to you. So, if you are going to have kids, don’t marry a stranger: simply screw your sister/cousin/brother/grandpa etc and pop out kids and don't forget to feed them your neighbors early on. They will then grow to be able to withstand being run over, stabbed, shot and burned without much irritation, thereby leaving things open for a sequel.

Bottom Line “Tagline: Wrong Turn - It’s the last turn you’ll ever take.” Nope, wrong. It’s the one and last time we’ll ever willingly watch this film.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age