Wrong Turn 2 (2007)

Star of the show, Mr Wayne Robson

Wrong Turn has got to be one of my favourite post-millennium horrors. I don’t think it has anything to do with my longtime love of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any of its contemporaries, but don’t mutated hillbillies make excellent villains? When Roger Ebert reviewed the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, he humorously and very knowingly detailed his concept of the Wrong Gas Station, which has applied to horror movies for decades, and applies to Wrong Turn: a ramshackle arrangement of cracked wooden planks that looks torn straight out of the ‘40s, with a crackly old hick in denim dungarees as its proprietor, who is always trusted despite his ominous nature and deliberate attempts to have his customers picked off by hick associates. You’d think the only gas station for miles around would make the most of its meagre custom – fat cigar stumps don’t pay for themselves, you know!

Ain't nobody got time for that!

The first Wrong Turn is a fun, tense, creepy movie with some great effects and good actors (Jeremy Sisto’s hair, anyone?). It’s one of those movie series, rather like Final Destination, at which you can look and wonder exactly when the makers decided they were not making a serious movie anymore. The first one can pass for pretty much straight horror slasher; the second decides to take it from a more wink-wink-nudge-nudge approach, both in theme and in specifics. The central disdain for the curse that is reality TV allows us all to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern media, while the hideously inventive death sequences allow us to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern splatter.

Wrong Turn 2, I assume, takes place in a location close to the first one, and is centred on a group of (mostly) dickheads who are taking part in a survivalist reality show. Among them is the slut, the horny pest punching way above his weight, the mousy girl and the moronic male – classic lineup. Tokens include a black guy who survives and a hot lesbian who doesn’t. Heading the gang is the Colonel (Henry Rollins), a retired Marine who plays to the camera but fights like a champ. The first fantastic kill has taken place before the opening credits, and kicks things straight off with over-the-top deaths constructed with amazing effects and buckets of corn syrup blood. One thing you can always count on Wrong Turn for is memorable death sequences.

Before long, the local family of mutated hillbillies (which now extends beyond the original’s freaky fraternal trio to include…girl hillbillies!) are wreaking havoc and pulling contestants apart with their unnatural strength and durability, but certainly not missing out on any opportunities to fuck each other and birth worm-like babies. These are, after all, no ordinary hillbillies like the banjo kid in Deliverance; these are genetically-mutated cannibal hillbillies who have an unhealthily iron-rich diet and could definitely do with some vegetables. And that means that brothers fuck sisters in public places and sisters birth incest babies that consume toxic waste from a bottle. Although this family of hillbillies seems to have actually learned to speak a few words, they do still do a lot of their stupid manic laughter and hollering.

What can I say? Wrong Turn 2 just gives and keeps on giving for any good horror fan. Tons of splatter, lots of unexpected moments and an outstandingly good performance from Wayne Robson as Old Timer, the shrill patriarch of the family. There are characters you root for, and others whose untimely deaths you anticipate with bated breath. It’s fun, fast-paced, well filmed and done with enthusiasm as a directorial debut from Joe Lynch, and a very worthy successor of the original Wrong Turn.