My Love Letter to Wrong Turn (2003)

Dearest, dearest Wrong Turn,

This letter is long overdue, Wrong Turn. I've held such a torch for you ever since I saw you all those long years ago... Okay, it's only been eight years since you released your awesomeness on the world, but that's still a long time. And after all these years, after all the times I've watched you, I still love everything about you and what you have brought to the horror genre.

See, here's the thing about you that I don't think the haters get. You are exactly what a true horror movie should be and you smartly stay away from those things that usually detract from the main point of the film, which is HORROR. You are just straight-up gore and violence the whole way through. You have fantastic actors, no sex, and no attempts at lame comedy at any point in your movie and those are just a few of the reasons I love you so much.

Let's talk about that lack of sex, which I really admire. You don't have any boobs in the movie, which as a woman makes me very happy because I have my own boobs to look at and therefore it doesn't really do anything for me to see them in movies. Consequently, you also don't have any sex scenes which puts you in a class above all the other hot-young-people-go-into-the-woods-and-get-killed movies. Sure there is an implied oral copulation scene between Evan and Francine but you cut that off before anything is shown, so thank you for that. Let's focus on the horror, not the tits - that's always been my motto.

You take yourself seriously in a way that your sequels did not, even though mutant cannibal hillbillies is a subject that is easy to make light of. Despite a funny reference to Deliverance in one scene, you stray from cheesy one-liners and keep the situation serious and terrifying, like it should be.

And though this is mostly a trivial reason for adoring you, Wrong Turn, I can't ignore the fact that you star two amazingly hot people in your lead roles. I'm talking of course about the sexy bad boy-looking dude known as Mr. Desmond Harrington, and the girl to whom I freely admit to having a mad girl-crush on, Ms. Eliza Dushku. I fell in love with Eliza on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it was you who introduced me to Desmond the first time. Sadly, I've not seen his handsome ass in many other films since then, so I thank you for immortalizing those wicked good looks in at least one fantastic movie.

And your gore... oh, your gore. First of all, the Stan Winston effects on the mutants are amazing and they look so real for being so fake, you know? It's explained to the audience at the beginning of the film, through pictures and newspapers, that these guys are the result of inbreeding with all that genetic mutation shit. So then we get guys with bulbous flesh, hunchbacks, really bad teeth, and just all kinds of nasty shit going on. I love it.

Secondly, you've got some great kills, you know you do! The blood and guts are fantastic and though there is nothing really inventive about the style or way people are killed, it is still done in an amazingly beautiful and effective way. Let's see... you've got some barbed-wire-chain mouth-gashing,  an arrow straight through the eye, some arrows through the chest, and various hack-n-slashing. Probably the best one is when beautiful Emmanuelle Chriqui is running from the mutants high up in a tree and gets an axe to the mouth, severing the top of her head from her body - which then falls gracefully to the ground in a very cool overhead camera shot. Oh, it gives me shudders just thinking about it.

I have a small nitpick, Wrong Turn... something that never fails to make me laugh-slash-get-slightly-annoyed. Chris Flynn (Harrington) seems to cause a lot of the problems in the movie, the main being wrecking his car and Eliza's friend's car. He looks away from the road for a second and WHAMMO! But what gets me about this scene is that he looks away from the road to get a better look at a dead deer on the side of the road. I mean, who does that? You see a dead animal and you go, "Ew. Dead possum," and you move on. You don't adjust the rearview mirror and freaking crash your car and somebody else's because of a dead deer. Just sayin'.

Wrong Turn, your sequels and imitators (even though you are kind of an imitator yourself - don't deny it) just do not do you justice. I truly believe that you are one of the best horror films of the past decade and I love you so much. You are a bloody good time from start to finish, and that is why you are one of my favorites.

Sincerely,
Michele




P.S. I seriously want to %#&* Eliza Dushku. Like, not even kidding.