I
must admit that I enjoy the WRONG TURN movies.
I cannot believe that I saw the first one nine years ago on its first
release and while that premiere film was along the lines of a more serious "killer
in the woods" movie (it is very similar to Wes Craven's far more depraved THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977) though
nowhere near as frightening), the follow-up, WRONG TURN 2: DEAD END,
was made more tongue-in-cheek. I talked
to director Joe Lynch about it at press
time. I missed out on the third and fourth entries (which
are both presumably in the same vein, pun intended of course) because...well, I
honestly don't have a good reason, so
I have to catch up with those. WRONG
TURN 5: BLOODLINES is the latest and probably won't be the last, which is fine by me as they
are an entertaining series in the genre (the title card is very clever).
Doug
Bradley (HELLRAISER's Pinhead)
plays J. Odets Maynard, a complete creep and the head of three lunatic mountain
men who stumble upon (what else?) a group of friends (Lita, Billy, Julian,
Cruz, and Gus) who are in town for the 10th annual Mountain Man Music
Festival on Halloween in the fictitious town of Fairlake, VA, founded in 1814
(according to legend, Hillbillies overran Fairlake three years later and wiped
out the inhabitants; their bodies were never found).
Flash
forward to 2012 and the first casualty is an annoying news reporter who goes
out for a jog in the woods sporting earbuds (she's just as dumb as an oblivious New York City streetwalker)
and mistakes the killers for kids donning Halloween costumes.
The
three guys and two girls crash their car due to a ruse instigated by Maynard
and several of them end up in jail. Gus
and Lita spend time at a motel until Gus is kidnapped and tied between two
vehicles like Jennifer Jason Leigh in THE HITCHER (1986).
The
situation grows dire and begins to turn into something out of John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976) as the cell
phones go dead and the electricity is knocked out. The mountain men plan to break Maynard out of
the jail while terrorizing the friends, going so far as to bury one of them up
to their neck a la MOTEL HELL and running him over with a tractor; they use
barbed wire to blow out the tires of a friend attempting to get help.
One
of the mountain men laughs like a lunatic, and reminds me of the cackle of the
Headless Horseman on my "Famous Ghost Stories" LP that I was given
when I was seven (you can hear the laugh here at
the 2:30 point into the 7:37 track).
If
the film sounds like a pastiche of familiar over-the-top horror film kills, it
probably is, but director Declan O'Brien (who
has directed the last three films) keeps things moving and interesting, even
though seasoned genre fans can see the ending from a mile away.
The DVD and Blu-ray will contain the
following cleverly-titled extras:
"A
Day in the Death"
Hillbilly
Kills
Director's Die-aries
Audio
Commentary by director Declan O'Brien
The film can be ordered here
at Amazon.com.
