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Order this DVD from Amazon.com
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Wrong
Turn
(Twentieth Century
Fox Home Entertainment)
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| DVD
Release Date:
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October
14, 2003
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Length:
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85 mins.
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| Rated:
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R
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| Format:
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Widescreen (1.85:1), Full Screen (1.33:1)
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Audio:
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English Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby 2.0, Spanish Dolby 2.0
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| Subtitles:
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English, Spanish, Closed-Captioned
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| Extras:
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Audio
Commentary with director Rob Schmidt and stars Desmond
Harrington and Eliza Dushku, Featurette: Making of Wrong Turn,
Eliza Dushku: Babe in the Woods, Stan Winston Featurette,
Deleted Scenes, Fresh Meat: The Wounds of Wrong Turn, Poster
Concepts, Trailer
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Inbred Mountain Men. Is there anything
scarier? I don't think so. Why? Because they're real. Vampires?
Werewolves? I highly doubt you'll run into one of these in your
lifetime. But what if you were driving down some dirt road in the
middle of nowhere and your car broke down. They chance of running into
Inbred Mountain Men? Well, there's at least a small chance, and a
small chance, in my opinion, that's too much.
In short, this is the premise of Wrong Turn, the latest from director
Rob Schmidt starring Desmond Harrington and fanboy darling Eliza
Dushku. More importantly, for those of you who are interested, the
film is produced by FX guru Stan Winston, whose work I should not have
to detail. If you're asking yourself who Stan Winston is, you
shouldn't even be reading this review. Instead, you should visit any
one of his official sites (StanWinstonStudio.com,
StanWinstonCreatures.com,
StanWinstonProductions.com,
SW-Digital.com)
look around and then come back...
So, back to the movie. We've got Chris Finn (Desmond Harrington). He's
on his way to a job interview when he runs into a traffic jam. What
does he do? He tries to find a backroads way around it. Then we've got
Jessie (Eliza Dushku). She and a group of friends (who include Jeremy
Sisto and Emmanuelle Chriqui) just blew out their tires after running
over some chicken wire that somebody "accidentally" left in
the middle of the road. So, Chris "runs into" Jessie and her
friends and, seeing as how they are both screwed out of a ride, they
trek off into the mountains looking for help. Instead of help, they
come across a beat up old shack. Unfortunately nobody is home, so they
break trying to find a phone. Instead, they find a literal house of
horrors - but it's too late to get out. The homeowners are returning -
and they're inbred mountain men! So they hide inside until their
chance comes to escape. But when their big break comes, they
accidentally wake one of the mountain men, and the chase ensues. I
won't go into any more of the story. If you want to see more, you'll
have to check it out for yourself. And if you've already seen the
movie, well, you already know.
I usually don't go for scary movies, but this one was actually pretty
good. Rob Schmidt did pretty well with what he had, the cast was
strong (except for Emmanuelle Chriqui who I usually find pretty
annoying) and the FX work was exceptional. All in all, they combined
to make a creepy, above-average horror flick, at least by today's
standards.
In terms of special features, the DVD was a bit of a disappointment.
But for a moderately low budget flick, I guess you couldn't really
expect more. This is a double-sided DVD, with the widescreen version
on one side and the full screen version on the other. Divided between
the two sides are four featurettes. The first of these was titled Making
of Wrong Turn. I wouldn't even call it that. It's a brief behind
the scenes look with sound bites from the principle cast and the
filmmakers. It's definitely not a true "making-of"
featurette - instead it's more of a promotional video. The second
featurette is titled Eliza Dushku: Babe in the Woods which is
nothing more than a lot of "we love Eliza" ass-kissing from
the filmmakers. I would guess this was included for all the fans out
there who seem to love Eliza too. Next we get a featurette dedicated
to the film's "other" star, Stan Winston. We learn briefly
about the man and his work, how he got his start, other films he's
worked on and so on. This one isn't bad for his legions of fans. Flip
over the disc and you get the last featurette, titled Fresh Meat:
The Wounds of Wrong Turn. Basically, this is another Stan Winston
featurette, more specific to this film. Of all the featurettes, this
one is the one actually worth checking out if you liked the movie. We
learn about all the kills and the FX and more importantly, the work
that went into creating the mountain men.
Also included in the features, we get three deleted scenes. The
"waterfall" scene is the only one here that's actually
pretty decent, but I'm glad they didn't include it in the final cut.
It would have cheapened the movie. We also get some of the film's
poster concepts. I liked some of them a lot more than the actual
poster, which pretty much turned me off of the movie before I even saw
it. There's also a look at the film's trailer.
The final feature I'll mention here is the audio commentary. I watched
this movie pretty late one night and was afraid I'd have nightmares.
(I really have a thing about mountain men!) So, to kill a little time
before bed, I watched the movie with the audio commentary. I'll say
one thing about the commentary - it was a good cure - it made me
forget how scary this movie was. Smart is a good word here. Director
Rob Schmidt was pretty smart - he had a lot of intellectual things to
say about the movie. Eliza Dushku tried to be smart. She spouted off a
lot of anecdotes that I suppose she thought were smart. And finally
Desmond Harrington - he had a smart-ass comment about everything from
the movie. Overall, it was an okay commentary, although the long
stretches of silence were sometimes too much.
Looking back, I think I underestimated how good movie was going to be.
To tell the truth, it scared the shit out of me. Maybe it was the
inbred mountain men. Maybe, subconsciously, it brought back terrifying
memories of "Deliverance". Either way, to me, it was pretty
damned scary and it's worth checking out for the movie alone.
| The Movie: |
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7/10 |
| The
Extras: |
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4.5/10 |
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Wrong Turn
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