Hey folks, Harry here... Remember back around the end of September last year when Anton Sirius did a set report for us on that Stan Winston / Eliza Dushku horror film called WRONG TURN? CLICK HERE TO REFRESH YOUR MEMORY! Well, they've finally got this film presentable and they had their first test screening last night and from the sound of it, they scared the short hairs clean off the privates of the audience... Ok, maybe not that much, but there's definitely one lady that... well lost it during the screening. Hehehehe. Having read the script to this, I can completely imagine this scaring hell out of folks. There's spoilers below, but from the sound of things.. .this one is excellent...
Black Bruiser here.
I got back last night from the AMC Burbank 14, went with my friend who was invited to see "a really gory horror thriller test screening", and decided to go with her, up for the surprise of these things. So we settle into our seats and this guy announces that we are the very first audience to see this new flick called "Wrong Turn". Well, turns out it stars that sweet young thing Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who I have to say IÃve had the hots for since the first moment I saw her on Buffy. Also stars Jeremy Sisto (Six Feet Under) and is produced by Stan Winston Productions!!. For those of you that don't know, Stan Winston is the special effects living legend behind Alien, Terminator 2 and upcoming T3, AI, etc., and I have to tell you I have not jumped out of my seat, been grossed out and laughed in the same movie in a long long time. This is definitely the Deliverance of our generation - itÃs good, gory fun. Here's the story:
Chris (Desmond Harrington, from the TV series Taken, Ghost Ship ) crashes into a car with Jessie (Eliza Dushku), Scott (Jeremy Sisto), and Carly (Emmanuelle Chriqui, remember her from that NÃSync movie On the Line?) and two other friends deep in the Appalachian mountains. Since both their cars are disabled, they go looking for help. Three mysterious hillbilly mountain men (you only see quick shots of them in the beginning, so you don't see much of the sickly brown skin and strange facial formations that are the work of many many years of inbreeding until later) quickly kill the two that stay behind.
Then it gets interesting. Eliza and co. discover a strange vacant, dirty shack, and slowly realize that somebody really evil lives here, finding pickled teeth, and refrigerated organs among the disgusting place. Just as they discover this, the mountain men arrive at the home, and the four of them hide under the bed and in the bathroom and watch the deformed hillbillies hack apart one of their recently departed friends, waiting it out until the hillbillies fall into a deep sleep after what must have been a very large human feast (which is hinted at but not shown). The tension really builds in this scene, especially when they have to sneak past the mountain men as they sleep. My favorite audience moment happened as Eliza accidentally kicks a pot on the floor as she tries to silently creep past these sleeping men. As the pot went flying across the screen, one woman in the screening near me let out a HUGE shriek, and the whole room burst out in nervous laughter ñ great moment.
While they then escape, they mountain men follow them though the dense forest, smoking them out of a survival watchtower, and playing a cool cat and mouse game way up in the trees of the dense forest. This scene was pretty cool and original, and I totally laughed when Carly gets picked off. More chasing follows, and eventually Chris follows the mountain men back to their shack to rescue a captured Eliza. The film ends with lots of blood, violence and lots of fire in a fiery finale.
I loved the scares in the movie, and the false jumps were good too. While the Carly character annoyed me, she goes from this horny nymphet to a totally stupid and hysterical mound of sobbing (which was the point, I guess, but it still bugged me), the other actors were great, especially Eliza and Jeremy Sisto, who have some really funny lines.
The hillbilly special effects are first rate, and I would expect nothing less from Stan The Man Winston. The three hillbillies have strange prosthetic pig-like cheeks and lips that are truly horrifying, at first because they are only glimpsed quickly in shadows, and then later when seen in full light these guys really made me sick. Especially this one small, feisty, tree-climbing monkey like hillbilly (mabye the woman? ñ could this actually be some kind of deranged cannibal nuclear family?) with a really funny hyena laugh.
The filmmakers said this was a work in progress, but it seemed to be pretty finished to me. I'm curious to see what they do to make it better. I havenÃt seen anything by Rob Schmidt, the director, but his direction is totally solid, he really knows how to play with the audience and slowly work up the tension. He seems a natural for the horror genre.
I love the horny tight tank top wearing teenage girls stalked by inbred killer cannibal hillbilly movie genre! It works for me. Really fun scary and gross film.
Black Bruiser
