Movie Review: Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

 

Sometimes you've got to tell yourself to get your head out of your own ass. For years now, I have thought and spoken ill of Wrong Turn 2: Dead End for no other discernible reason than the fact that it was totally different from the first one. I've mentioned before that I've been listening to The Movie Crypt podcast (almost two months later and I'm FINALLY caught up on over 100 episodes), and one of the hosts of that show is Joe Lynch, the director of Wrong Turn 2. Every time he or Adam Green mentioned that movie on the podcast, I would cringe a little inside because I felt so bad for not liking it. But I honestly had not seen the whole movie in a long time, and after thoroughly loving Joe's latest output, Everly, I knew I would be visiting Wrong Turn 2 again to see if my mind had changed.

In the back country of West Virginia, a group of people enter the woods to film a reality television show about ultimate survival called "The Apocalypse." The contestants and crew soon find themselves in a real-life survival situation when they realize they've entered the territory of an inbred family of mutant cannibals who hunt and butcher humans like animals.

So after catching up with Wrong Turn 2 today, I've concluded that I'm an asshole. There was NO reason for me to hate this movie as much as I have. My initial aversion to it was based on my undying love for the first film, which was a solid, gory, serious film and one of the best horrors of the 2000s. And because of its respectability, when I first saw the sequel, I was really taken aback and almost angry at how quickly the series went the stupid comedy route. But it doesn't. At all. Wrong Turn 2 has a campy vibe reminiscent of 80s splatter films, but it never goes full comedy, and keeps a serious tone throughout.

The cast of characters is diverse, and though you can look at some of them as being cliché, most are very likable. There are the douchebags and jerks in characters like Jonesy and Michael - or as he likes to be called, "M" - and the bitches and stand-offish females like Elena and Amber. Mara, the skittish TV producer, is the red herring final girl who brings out the best in our real final girl, Nina. Henry Rollins plays the host of the reality show, Dale, and he's... well, he's Henry Rollins. Tough and intense, but with a lot of heart. Jake (played by someone with the awesome name of Texas Battle) is also one of the nice, good guys whom you are rooting for to survive. Nina is just the best, though. She starts out the film a little bitchy but grows into your favorite character. She's hot and tough and more than contributes to the demises of the mutants like an awesome final girl should.

The mutant family is an entirely new group from the ones that were introduced in the first Wrong Turn film, indicating that this is like a fucked-up extended family and that there are many more of them out there. The Stan Winston effects work on the mutants in the original really brought those characters to life, and helped differentiate between them. Here, the mutants all look pretty much the same, and their deformities are not nearly as extreme - just some cleft lips and bulbous facial tumors. They also actually speak in this movie, and there is more of a family dynamic with Ma and Pa Mutant and Brother and Sister Mutant, and apparently Three Finger is in here too but I didn't recognize him as easily. It's actually nice to see one other character return from the first film, and the slight expansion of his involvement with the mutants. All of the mutants are still disgusting and unrelentingly brutal in their kills, and that's really what we want to see with the Wrong Turn sequel.

The gore in Wrong Turn 2 is just great. I always remembered the film mostly for Kimberly Caldwell's death in the beginning where she gets split in half height-wise. Right off the bat this establishes the kind of movie this is going to be - maybe when I first saw it, I didn't have the same level of appreciation for these films like I unabashedly do now. There's a nasty mutant birthing scene, an even nastier mutant incest sex scene, and many other scenes that are just full of intestines and tons of blood and it's all awesome. The only disappointing thing is when certain characters die that you don't want to - like, how the hell can you kill Henry Rollins? Especially when he becomes the deus ex machina and saves Nina and Jake's lives? Ugh, that sucked. Really wanted Rollins to live. Otherwise, there are lots of nice deaths with arrows, knives, and of course the absolute best part at the end with the huge grinding machine thing - Wiki says it's a tree debarker, so that's cool. There's also dynamite. And people getting blown up with the dynamite. That's tits.

So hopefully this review serves as a good apology for any shit-talking I have done about Wrong Turn 2. It doesn't suck! It doesn't suck at all, and I don't know what I saw all those years ago that made me think that. Joe Lynch, I am so, so sorry. The movie is great, and I'm glad I gave it another chance, something I should have done a long while ago.

Review: Masters of Horror: Right to Die (2007)

Director Rob Schmidt could hardly be called a "Master of Horror" at the time that he directed Right to Die because he only had one horror film under his belt. But seeing as how that one horror film was one of my favorites of all time, Wrong Turn, I was excited to see what he could do with this episode. Truthfully, I had been majorly disappointed by most of the Masters of Horror episodes so I stopped seeking them out after a while. However, since they're only an hour long I gave this one a shot the other day and I'm glad to say that this is one of the better ones.

After his wife Abby is left badly burned and in a coma after a car accident, Cliff Addison has to make the horrible decision of whether or not to "pull his plug" on her. The problem is that every time Abby flatlines, she visits Cliff in the most awful ways, hellbent on revenge for recent slights committed against her. Cliff then has to figure out a way to keep Abby alive, or risk becoming one of her victims himself.

The first thing that attracts me to this episode is that the plot is one of the most creative I've seen in a while. It is essential a ghost story (do you know what I'm going to say here?) and I loves me some ghosts, so I was impressed with the unique perspective they took on the typical ghost or haunting story. Abby basically has one foot in the grave with how nasty burned up she is, and whenever she "dies" in the hospital, she takes the opportunity to get back at her husband. The visits last only as long as it takes for the doctors to revive her. I really thought that was genius, especially when you consider Cliff's dilemma - it'll solve all his problems if she dies, but her spirit will mostly kill him if she dies, as well.

One place that the Masters of Horror have never disappointed me on is the gore factor and Right to Die has got some great gore moments. I have a pretty severe fear of being burned by fire so this episode did absolutely nothing to alleviate that. Abby has been burned basically over 100% of her body so she's bandaged head to toe but when she visits Cliff's mistress, Trish, and his sleazy lawyer (Corbin Bernsen rules) she is gored-out and bloody and oozy and I was very uncomfortable. But that scene where she's propped up on the table and the doctors are doing something like removing skin or whatever? YEESH. That was disgusting. Oh, and you know how when you pull a slice of pizza out of the pie and the cheese gets all gooey and sticks to the edges? Yeah, that's what it looked when the doctors use the defibrillator paddles on Abby while trying to resuscitate her.

The climactic scene comes when Cliff learns that the doctors only have a few hours to save Abby using skin grafts and they need a donor. Cliff finds a donor himself in the slutty Trish girl and proceeds to tie her down, dose her with laughing gas, and skin her alive - because, of course, the skin has to be fresh. The makeup effects here, and really throughout the whole episode, was very impressive and seamless. Everything is shown in all its bloody glory with nothing left to the imagination and it was fantastic. High five to those guys at KNB because they really know their shit.

By the end of the episode, I couldn't help but be on Abby's side. Sure she's kind of a vengeful bitch, but when the truth about what happened to her is revealed, you realize that Cliff has gotten off easy for all the things he has done. He had an affair, basically murdered his wife, and though he shows remorse for it all, his reasons for wanting to save her are completely selfish. At the end, when Abby has finally died (for good), Cliff walks through the front door where his wife's ghost is waiting for him and apparently takes his punishment. I was expecting a more bloody end for Cliff with a big climactic battle with Abby's ghost but this ending was so much more effective. You don't really have to see what happens to Cliff to know that he is pretty much fucked in the hands of the woman he betrayed and killed.

Schmidt definitely has some talent in the horror genre with this and Wrong Turn, so I would be more than happy to check out anything else he has to offer. Right to Die had a great story and was delightfully and disgustingly gory. Gives me hope for some of the other episodes I'm still catching up on.

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.

Project Terrible: Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

The first Wrong Turn film from 2003 is undoubtedly one of the best horror films of the last decade and one of my personal favorite horror films of all time. That's probably the reason why I was so disappointed by Wrong Turn 2: Dead End. Admittedly, I shut it off halfway through simply because of the dramatic shift in tone and style from the first one - it made me a little angry, sure.

Knowing all this, a person whom I thought was my blog buddy, Maynard of Maynard Morrissey's Horror Movie Diary, gave me Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead as my movie for Project Terrible. I was dreading this movie like nothing I've ever dreaded before. I knew it was going to suck, knew it was going to be nothing but retarded characters running around the woods and getting killed. Blah.

So here's the thing. It almost pains me to admit it and Maynard is gonna make me eat some words here, but I actually didn't hate this movie. At least I didn't hate it as much as I did the second film and this one is no way as good as the first, but it had enough of what I like in a horror movie - a quick story and fun gore - to make me dig it a bit. But this is Project Terrible and I'm going to start the review with what I didn't enjoy so much about the movie.

This is probably the only time I will show
partial boobs on my site.

The story is more involved than I thought it would be, and sometimes not in a good way. The movie starts off with quite a bang as four kayakers are almost immediately dispatched of by our favorite hillbillies (well, three kayakers - one escapes and shows up later). Then we get into some weird story of a prison transfer and a guard's last night on duty and a prisoner's plan for escape during the drive to another prison. This brings about some annoying scenes of the prisoners - Chavez and Floyd - fighting and backstabbing over and over and over and OVER again. It gets even worse when the group randomly finds in the woods an old armored truck full of money.

These parts also get quite irritating when there is constant fighting over the money and the prisoners making the guards and Alex, the survivor from the kayak massacre, carrying the money through the woods as the main guard, Nate, leads Chavez to a phone or something so he can contact his "boys." The group gets picked off one by one by the 3 Finger mutant and after each death, it seems like there is yet ANOTHER fight over the money and whether or not the prisoners should kill the others. Just make up your mind already, seriously. Then that whole side story suddenly doesn't matter anymore when the money gets burned up by 3 Finger. Oi, how annoying.

The biggest sour note to this movie has to do with the special effects work. The main thing is that the mutants are simply not as well done as in the original film. Granted, Wrong Turn had the genius of Stan Winston behind those mutants and they looked freaking GREAT. The bad teeth, the bulbous and deformed hands, heads and limbs (I always loved the guy with the hunchback) all made these guys truly grotesque and terrifying.

The Wrong Turn 3 bad guys, however, not only don't have the same quality makeup as before, but the mutant family has dwindled down to just two members, and later on only the mutant known as 3 Finger is left to do all the carnage himself. This was a disappointment because to me, one guy is not really as scary as three.

The good part about this movie was most of the death scenes. The original film was pretty much all hack-and-slash with axes and arrows but this one pumps that up much more. Three Finger has set up booby traps in the woods - including an "egg slicer" that slices an guy's entire body into three pieces and a trap on his truck that encases a guy in wire then hoists him up so 3 Finger can drag him down the street. Niiiiiiiice. There are also some nice impalings like a pipe through the mouth and an arrow through the boob and eye for one poor girl.

However. The CGI blood sucked. Especially on the egg slicer death which was cool in theory and got hokey at the end when the guy split apart and there was very obvious CG blood spurting up from his body. But this was the only part where it really bothered me, thank goodness.

Small question: What happened to the female deputy? I'm thinking that she was the half-dead naked girl all twisted up in barbed wire inside the mutants' house but I couldn't tell for sure. Anybody got word on that?

I'm seriously shocked at how much I liked this movie. Though it falters a bit in story, the action is well-paced and the gore is inventive and, for the most part, fairly well done. The first film in the Wrong Turn series is still at the top of the pack for me while the second one is well below the bottom of the pack. I'd say the third is at about a happy medium.