Nor is the idea of murderous inbred redneck hillbillies played for realistic terror. There’s not an ounce of humor or self-awareness in the screenplay. 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). There are a lot of things wrong with this movie, and no things that are right. I guess we are simply supposed to believe that West Virginia is populated by deformed hillbillies who squeal and kill people for kicks. There’s no creativity or invention to the horror scenes, nor is there ever any motivation given for the hillbillies to kill.
The remaining characters hide somewhere else. Somebody accidentally does something that gives away their hiding position. Most of Wrong Turn consists of one scenario repeated again and again. Then there’s Jessie, played by Eliza Dushku, who does the same tough-chick act she did on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and in Bring It On and in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and in just about everything else she’s ever been in. Emmanuelle Chriqui ( On the Line) plays Carly, who is recently engaged to the jokester named Scott (Jeremy Sisto). Chris (Desmond Harrington) is ostensibly a doctor, although that plot thread never goes anywhere. (One has to wonder if this movie will play at even a single theater in West Virginia, and what the audience reaction will be if it does.) Two of the characters – the ones played by actors we’ve never seen before – are quickly killed. Six young people are lost on the back roads of West Virginia, where they are hunted and terrorized by a family of inbred redneck hillbillies. The “plot” is about as basic as you can get.
Were there still such cinemas today, I have no doubt that Wrong Turn would inspire those Times Square crowds to wreak havoc. Of course, grindhouse audiences were known to become physically destructive if the movie didn’t deliver the goods. This is exactly the kind of film that would have once played those grindhouses. There’s irony in the fact that I saw the movie Wrong Turn only one day after beginning the book. These theaters – no longer in existence – specialized in exploitation movies that, in the authors’ words, “let their freak flags fly high.” In other words, they played the most lurid, shocking, and violent horror pictures you could find.
It’s a history of the infamous Times Square grindhouse cinemas of the 1960’s and 1970’s. I’m currently reading a book called “Sleazoid Express” by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford.
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