Categories: Movies

Movie Review: Wrong Turn 2

If I have a guilty pleasure in movie viewing, it’s watching a good gore-fest featuring inbred cannibals hunting down normal, but stupid, people, finding increasingly disgusting ways of killing their prey, and eating them. If that’s the kind of fare that appeals to you at 2 am on a Saturday night, then “Wrong Turn 2: Dead End” should suffice.

Don’t get me wrong, this flick is no “The Hills Have Eyes”, or even “The Hills Have Eyes 2”, movies which set the standard for inbred cannibalistic killer movies. I enjoyed the original “Wrong Turn”, in which a bunch of charactors whose names escape me/aren’t important are stranded in the middle of nowhere (actually, West Virginia…same thing) following a car accident and have to find their way back to civilization. Once the inbreds start chasing and killing the “normal city folk” the fun begins. What I like about the original Wrong Turn is that there is plenty of dramatic tension throughout the movie. You really don’t know if anyone is going to survive at the end, or at which point an inbred cannibal is going to get his mitts on somebody and start carving them up for dinner.

Unfortunately, this “keep ’em guessing” tension which made the original so entertaining is missing in “Wrong Turn 2”. Unfortunately, too many scenes are played for laughs. None of the surviving characters from the first movie make an appearance in this direct-to-video sequel. Instead, “Wrong Turn 2” pits the contestants of a survival reality show called “The Apocalypse” against the inbred cannibals. The reality show is hosted by a character played by real-life spoken-word artist, talks show host, actor and general badass Henry Rollins, whose talents are wasted in this move.

The movie starts promising enough, with the grisly death of a real-life reality show contestant from a certain show I won’t mention because I truly detest it (let’s just say the word “American” is in the title, and there is “singing” involved). Well, that got my attention. Unfortunately, the scares and gore scenes are few and far between following this opening scene.

As the contestants of “The Apocalypse” play the survival game and they get picked off by the inbred cannibals one-by-one, it soon becomes clear to them that they truly are in a situation they must survive. The heck with the prize money…who wants to wind up on a spit over a cooking fire?

During the course of the movie we learn that the inbred cannibals are actually members of a family who refused to leave this scenic part of West Virginia after the land and water became polluted by a mining operation. The area is so toxic that there are no birds, fish or animals. Without any varmints or vittles in the area, what else are the inbred cannibals supposed to eat?

This is about what you would expect from a direct-to-video movie…you know, the kind you get on Dollar Night at the 7-11. Or you could just watch “The Hills Have Eyes”…again.