Wrong Turn (Blu-ray) (2003)

"...goes from just a little scary to terrifying.  Kevin Carr, Film Threat
"You get exactly what you expect -- blood, guts and people being taken to the killing floor.  Kevin M. Williams, Chicago Tribune
"Horror fans will have a blast...  Luke Y. Thompson, Dallas Observer
"...sheer, unadulterated nastiness with no apologies.  Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide
"A Wrong Turn has never been so terrifying...A must see!  Mike Pingel, HollywoodFYI.com

Editor's Note Revisiting the teenage slasher movies of the 1970s and 1980s, WRONG TURN is a tense, suspense-packed horror film starring Eliza Dushku (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER). When Chris (Desmond Harrington) is late for a job interview, he drives speedily through a backwoods dirt road, and winds up in a head-on collision with a group of teenage campers. As the cars are totalled, the group has no option but to trek through the woods and seek help. Stumbling upon a mysterious cabin, the unhappy campers soon realize they are in grave danger when they happen upon a mixture of grotesque oddities and body parts, soon followed by the return of the freakish inhabitants of the disgusting abode. The intensity builds as the inbred, kill-crazy cabin dwellers go after Chris and the campers, leading to some grisly scenes in the dense woodland, and a series of brutal, bloody set-pieces from director Rob Schmidt. WRONG TURN takes similar backwoods horror flicks like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE HILLS HAVE EYES as its inspiration, providing visceral thrills aplenty, and the requisite amount of dumb teenage characters. Never lapsing into self-parody, the film should appeal to older horror movie fans keen to revisit the movies of their youth, and younger fans eager to witness some modern-day stalk-and-slash mayhem!

	Jeremy Sisto
	Emmanuelle Chriqui
	Eliza Dushku
	Kevin Zegers
	Desmond Harrington
	Lindy Booth
	Patrick Wachsberger - Executive Producer
	Alan McElroy - Screenwriter
	Robert Kulzer - Producer
	Don Carmody - Executive Producer
	Aaron Ryder - Executive Producer
	Brian Gilbert - Producer
	Erik Feig - Producer
	Mitch Horwits - Executive Producer
	John S. Bartley - Director of Photography
	Elia Cmiral - Composer
	Stan Winston - Producer
	Rob Schmidt - Director

Los Angeles Times
"...[Schmidt] manages to keep the suspense up through the final hour of the film..." 06/02/2003 p.C4

Sight and Sound
"...[Schmidt] has a sharp sense of how to stage unconventional action scenes..." 08/01/2003 p.64

Total Film
"...The two leads emerge as intelligent, capable characters, consistently exhibiting resourcefulness to outwit their pursuers..." 08/01/2003 p.104

San Francisco Chronicle 5 of 10
In "Wrong Turn," crazed, filthy hillbillies kill and eat tourists. That way they don't pester the locals for directions. This is standard hack-and-giggle fare, with a few wisecracks mixed in with the gore..."I need to pee," one of the girls says. Her boyfriend replies, "I need to remind you of a little movie called Deliverance. "...In the end, however, there are too few wisecracks and too much gore. Worse yet, the plot unfolds like a slasher-by-the-numbers kit. Caught in the vast and empty wilderness under eerie circumstances, the group of attractive young guys and gals decides to . . . wait for it . . . split up...From there it is simply a matter of picking them off one by one -- dumbest and most obnoxious first. Naturally, the zombie hillbillies move at the speed of a glacier yet still manage to catch up with their frantic victims time after time. Chased through the woods, the girls fall down and whimper that they are never going to make it. When our heroes finally find a safe spot for the night, they make sure to turn on lights so the glow in the windows reveals where they are...And so it goes. Early on, when the gibbering mountain weirdos were just shapes and shadows, it looked as if this might have a chance. But someone spent too much on makeup to keep these "leatherface" wannabes a secret. The minute they step into the light, looking like "Men in Black" extras having a bad-hair day, the tension leaks right off the screen...Actually, there is one sincerely scary moment. At the very end there is a strong hint of a sequel. - C.W. Nevius

Variety 5 of 10
Another movie about mutant inbred cannibals? Already? Yes, it seems impossible, but here is Rob Schmidt's "Wrong Turn," arriving barely one month after Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" and carrying with it a similarly cautionary, ecological message about the dangers of trekking off into the woods unawares. And though it substitutes for the likes of Sid Haig and Karen Black a fresher-faced cast of twentysomethings (led by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"s' Eliza Dushku), the clear ambition here is to recapture the raw, explosively violent atmosphere of such hallmark 1970s shockers as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Hills Have Eyes." Nice try, but no cigar...One might wonder what makes "Wrong Turn" so much worse than something like Victor Salva's equally derivative "Jeepers Creepers," in which similarly naive youngsters found themselves being pursued through uninhabited terrain by a malevolent creature. Simply that Salva showed an obvious affinity for and understanding of genre mechanics. "Creepers" was creepy -- it really knew how to work the audience, how to make so many things old seem new again--whereas "Wrong Turn" looks like the unprocessed spill-off of a recycling center...For the most part, pic's cast seems clued-in to what junk this is, though Harrington is so particularly expressionless that it's tough to tell whether he's bored or just bad. Only Sisto (whose demented Billy commanded the first season of "Six Feet Under") tries to make lemonade out of the movie's lemons with an enjoyably ticky turn that, regrettably, bites the dust mid-way through. John S. Bartley's underlit lensing (making Stan Winston's elaborate makeup frequently imperceptible) and Elia Cmiral's predictably plosive score contribute to a noticeably weak tech package. - Scott Foundas