Chris Flynn (Desmond Harrington) is driving across West Virginia when his journey is halted by an accident on the highway up ahead. After a trucker tells him it will take a couple of hours to clear up, Chris decides he can't waste time, and heads off along the back roads through the forest, frustrated that he can't find a phone that works. Suddenly, a stationary car appears around the bend, and Chris rams straight into it. It belongs to a group of five young people and has had its tires burst by a line of barbed wire strung across the road, so Chris, still shaken, agrees to set off with three of them to find help. But there is no help to be found....
A brisk, nasty, no-nonsense horror, Wrong Turn was written by Alan McEvoy and was yet another film inspired by the Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film makes its intentions clear in the first five minutes: a couple are rock climbing when they are brutally murdered by unseen hands, then we go into a title sequence that depicts black and white photographs of inbred country folk and newspaper clippings of mysterious disappearances around the area. If you've seen the Tobe Hooper film you know what to expect, and Wrong Turn doesn't make any effort to erase that film from your mind. It's almost a tribute to it, only with more attractive scenery (although the computer generated scenery later on is a letdown).
The story is so predictable that you can successfully guess who will be killed and in which order. The two left with the damaged vehicles are typical slasher movie victims, not too bright but horny. The four who go off for help are a little different, though. I don't know whether it's the script or the way Harrington plays him, but Chris is cold and distant, the strong silent type who we find out little about: he's a doctor, but that's as far as his background goes. You'll see that everything in this movie is pared down to the bare essentials.
The others are Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui), who is the girlfriend of Scott (Jeremy Sisto) an interesting, humorous character who's kind of the Shaggy of the group ("I need to remind you of a little movie named Deliverance"). Lastly, we have the intelligent Jessie (Eliza Dushku), who has recently been dumped by her boyfriend. There is a nod to making us care about these people, but the main reason they're there is to be terrorised by the mountain men who pick off unwary travellers for food and their transport.
The current, proposed victims find a grotty cabin where there's a nasty surprise for them: not only a lack of phones, but body parts in the fridge. A strong fright scene follows where the mountain men return unexpectedly with the bodies of the two who had been left behind, so Chris and the rest have to hide while one girl's body is butchered. The film isn't afraid to be vicious, and there is good suspense to follow, as in the watchtower bit. Economical it may be, but Wrong Turn delivers the thrills, and doesn't outstay its welcome. Don't turn off the film when the credits start. Music by Elia Cmiral.
[Special features on the DVD are a semi-humorous commentary with Schmidt, Dushku and Harrington, stressing the hardship of making the film, four short featurettes including one on makeup effects man Stan Winston, a trailer, a poster gallery and deleted scenes.]
