Horror over the past few years have become losing touch with their roots. Not all of them, but a lot of them were becoming so self aware that they were becoming mockeries of themselves. It all started with Scream, which was a very good film, but it could also be charged as signaling the downward spiral of the horror film. Strange way to start a review of Wrong Turn, don't you think? Well, Wrong Turn is not in that area of horror, and it's a better film for it. I'm not saying it was completely successful, or signals a turn around, but it is a lot better than I was expecting.
The story concerns a small group of twenty-something's who stumble across a trio of inbred mountain men in West Virginia. What could easily have been a hokey Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripoff, is actually a pretty scary and grueling fight for survival. Chris Flynn is late and caught in a traffic jam, while looking for another way around, he finds a road not listed on the normal map, he follows it. Before you know it, he's run into a broken down SUV and it's four passengers. They set off, on foot, to find a phone, what they find isn't very nice. Living in the woods is a trio of cannibals who start picking them off one by one. It becomes a race for survival with death nipping at their heels.
The film stars Eliza Dushku and Desmond Harrington. Dushku plays Jessie, and does a good job of it, giving us a strong character who is human, showing signs of vulnerability. Harrington is Chris, he does a decent job, but fills the more traditional tough guy role. The acting all around is good for the subject, good at playing alternately scared and tough. A performance I thought particularly good, yet somewhat overshadowed by the main stars, is that of Emmanuelle Chriqui, who plays Carly. On the surface she is basically a bubbly tag along, but as the film progresses, you can see her going into shock in stages. It was very effective, I didn't really notice it until my most recent viewing.
The direction is solid from Rob Schmidt, he dies a good job at ratcheting up the tension yet keeping focus on our heroes. Another thing that works well is that the bad guys are not given much screentime early on, you know they are there, but just flashes. Backing up Schmidt's direction is the legendary Stan Winston providing the make-up effects. Winston's work is always top notch, bringing a very believable air of reality to the gore and bad guys. There is an abundance of fake scares and other horror movie cliches, but it works so well that I didn't mind.
Video. The video is presented in it's original aspect ration of 1.85:1, anamorphically enhanced. On the flipside is the full frame version, but we don't really care about that. The image is very good, a good portion of this film is dark, very dark, and it is represented very well here. Detail is always good.
Audio. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, it is a very good track. It makes good use of the surrounds with the sounds of the woods filtering around you. Good work.
Extras. We get a nice selection, but sadly they are split onto the two sides of the disk, so if you want to see all of the features, you will have to put that full screen side in the player.
-Commentary. The track features Director Rob Schmidt, and stars Eliza Dushku and Desmond Harrington. I sampled a few portions of the track, it seemed sort of interesting, but I'll need to listen to more to make any real comment on it.
-Deleted Scenes. There are a few scenes here, one of which I could not determine the difference with what was in the film, another version of the waterfall sequence which is inferior to the version used, and some dailies. Not much.
-Poster gallery. Some interesting alternate poster designs.
-Featurettes. There are a couple of featurettes, none of which are all that in depth, but interesting none the less. "Making of Wrong Turn" is a short fluffy little promo piece. "Eliza Dusku- Babe in the Woods" is a short look at the work Eliza put in. "Stan Winston" is a short piece on Stan's history, it shows just how many great films he's worked on and his commitment to genre films. "Fresh Meat- The Wounds of Wrong Turn" is a nice look at the creation of the gore effects and make up for the mountain men.
-Lastly there is the theatrical trailer.
Bottomline. This was a surprisingly effective horror movie, with scares that don't delve into the comedic side of horror. Not a classic by any stretch, but one of the better horror films to come out of 2003. This DVD is a nice set with a decent selection of extras and a good overall presentation. I would definitely recommend this to horror fans, or anyone looking for a good scare.
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