Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 14, 2007, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Director Joe Lynch has said that he intended Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (to be released October 9 on extras-packed DVD by Fox) as a homage to the early-’80s splatter sequels, but he has one advantage today that the makers of those films didn’t back then: the unrated DVD release. That has given him license to enthusiastically throw around blood by the bucketful, easily outdoing the original film on the splatter score; Lynch and his cohorts (including makeup FX supervisor Bill Terezakis) even find a way to top the first Turn’s arrow-in-the-eye highlight gag. The material may be familiar and none too surprising, but Lynch punches it across with all the energy of a longtime hardcore horror fan getting the chance to let it all hang out in his debut feature. You can tell he loves this stuff.
The narrative framework for all the bloodshed is the latest in the long recent line of reality-shows-gone-bad stories, following a motley team of contestants and crew into the West Virginia forests to shoot a Survivor knockoff with a postapocalyptic gimmick. The obligatory celebrity contestant is intended to be American Idol veteran Kimberly Caldwell, who plays herself in a prologue that quite decisively removes her from the action, and sets the over-the-top tone for the mayhem to come. With one player missing, series producer Mara (Aleksa Palladino) is pressed into service as her replacement, joining a gang played by an assortment of genre remake/sequel veterans: Texas Chainsaw’s Erica Leerhsen as vegan Nina, Hills Have Eyes II’s Daniella Alonso as tough chick Amber and two veterans of Final Destination 3: Crystal Lowe as hottie Elena and Texas Battle as Jake, the token African-American who rebels against the preconception that he’ll be the resident wiseguy/horndog. That task falls to Jonesy (Steve Braun), who macks on all the ladies and gets really seriously annoying really seriously fast, to the point where you’ll be praying he’s the first to go.
And you know no good will come to most or all of them as they trudge through the trees, following their briefing by the show’s host, military veteran/advisor Dale Murphy (amusingly played as an R. Lee Ermey type by Henry Rollins). The establishing scenes in the script by Turi Meyer and Al Septien (old hands at this kind of budget follow-up, with credits including Leprechaun 2 and Candyman 3) are mostly there to mark time on the way to the good stuff, which involves the deformed mutant brood living in the woods and just thirstin’ to pick off the fresh meat that’s ventured onto their turf. Here’s where the perverse, twisted fun begins, especially when it comes to the young freaks played by Clint Carleton and Rorelee Tio, a brother and sister who enjoy each other’s, er, company. Their pa is played by Ken Kirzinger, ol’ hockey-mask in Freddy vs. Jason, and they and the rest of their kin set upon the hapless trespassers with blades and other assorted pointed objects. Inevitably, some of their prey begin to fight back, with invariably messy results all around.
Where genre cinema is concerned, the DVD market has sometimes been called the new drive-in, and Wrong Turn 2 is a perfect example. It’s an unapologetic exploitation flick with no pretensions that eagerly serves up the juicy stuff—including some gratuitous nudity—and doesn’t suffer from either delusions of grandeur or the sour, misanthropic attitude that has marred some recent homages to B-fare of the past (and, to be sure, some of those older films too). It’s bloodthirsty but not overly sadistic, and the characters (Jonesy excepted) and performances are ingratiating enough that you’ll kinda feel bad when they die—but not so bad that you can’t catch the contagious glee with which Lynch stages their demises. And while the deaths of the contestants are staged with maximum gusto, Lynch really paints the room red once the tables start getting turned on their attackers.
Along the way, there are…um…homages to splatterfests past, most notably a dinner sequence right out of the original Chainsaw, as well as a yucky birth that, apparently accidentally, directly recalls the one that opened Hills II. Amidst these retro elements, Lynch pulls off a few nice flourishes, as when one of the TV gang gets murdered while the image is duplicated on a monitor screen next to him. Wrong Turn 2 may not break any new ground, but it goes about its business with a low-rent and occasionally stylish confidence that sets it apart from a lot of the opportunistic DVD fare out there. It’s certainly enough to make you want to see what Lynch can do with a movie that’s not a sequel.
