Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 30, 2003, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
As an entry in the current spate of movies that follow in the tradition of ‘70s/’80s horror, Wrong Turn falls squarely in the middle. Comparatively speaking, it’s no Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it’s a far cry from dreck like, say, Humongous. At its best, it’s a lean and mean shocker with a commendable simplicity and narrative drive, one that doesn’t act like a homage in the winking, self-reflexive manner of some recent fright films.
On the other hand, an acknowledgment of an awareness of the genre’s standards—in the form of a few variations on them—might have made Wrong Turn something truly special. There aren’t really any surprises in Alan McElroy’s script (the film’s closest ‘80s antecedent, Jeff Lieberman’s underrated Just Before Dawn, worked more interesting wrinkles into its storyline), and that includes the question of which of the characters will live or die. It’s a disadvantage of any horror film working with a studio budget, really; the casting of recognizable actors can be pretty telltale when it comes to predicting who will survive and what will be left etc.
At least the film doesn’t bog itself down with unwieldy character exposition; the effective title sequence tells us, through newspaper snippets, all we need to know about its inbred backwoods villains, eliminating the need for some wizened local to explain them to the protagonists. There is, in fact, an ol’ timer running a gas station who pops up during the first reel, but he’s mostly there to be unhelpful to Chris (Desmond Harrington), who’s driving through West Virginia to a job interview and needs a shortcut. Taking a back road, he literally runs into a carful of young friends who have been stranded by a flat tire: two couples and a conveniently single girl, Jessie (Eliza Dushku).
Undistracted by having a squeeze around, it is Jessie who discovers that their vehicle was sabotaged by barbed wire in the road. Heading off for help, leaving one couple behind in case someone comes along (bye, kids), Chris, Jessie and newly engaged Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and Scott (Jeremy Sisto) come upon a large, ramshackle house in the middle of the woods. No one’s home, but they need a phone and Carly needs a bathroom—yet that still doesn’t explain why, once the group discovers a bowl full of car keys and rooms full of clearly purloined belongings, they don’t immediately hightail it out of there. It’s enough to make you yell at the screen, asking whether they have any sense—or at least if they’ve seen Breakdown.
Once the house’s gnarled occupants arrive home, however, Wrong Turn starts cooking. Director Rob Schmidt and cinematographer John S. Bartley give the film an atmosphere that’s slick but not glossy, making excellent use of the Canadian locations and some very convincing forest sets. Schmidt also stages the mayhem well, keeping it down and dirty and largely free of gimmickry. There’s a directness to the the inbreds’ attempts to kill their prey and the youths’ struggle to survive that heightens the tension, and even if you pretty much know who’s going to get it and when, the deaths are sufficiently brutal and visceral to get under your skin. One bloody punchline in particular is sudden and startling enough to be one of the best seat-jumpers since Sam Jackson got et up in Deep Blue Sea.
Once the survivors turn the tables on their attackers, the filmmakers smartly resist the current trend toward giving them in-your-face wisecracks to speak as they deliver the coups de grace. Also refreshing is the sense that Schmidt and co. realize that, this far into the youth-horror game, it’s not a big deal for a girl to fight back as hard as a guy. Throughout the film, the youths’ reactions to their terrorization are as believable as any in the slasher genre, which helps make up for the fact that they’re not given much in the way of personality beforehand; only Sisto, giving his lines a fun, laid-back spin, is able to make any real impression before they start running for their lives. The mountain men are creepily enacted by Julian Richings (the odd-looking first victim in Cube), Garry Robbins and Ted Clark, working under effectively nasty makeup by Shane Mahan and Stan Winston Studio, who also contribute more gore than one might expect a major studio to get away with these days.
Winston was also one of the film’s four producers, and despite his current fame as a creator of bigger and more elaborate screen monsters, Wrong Turn demonstrates a refreshing back-to-basics approach. It’s a shame that the movie is being thrown out in the midst of the hotly competitive early-summer scene, when its modest but palpable thrills might have found wider audience acceptance during the Halloween season. One thing’s for sure: it would have killed at the box office 20 years ago.
