My usual format won’t work for this one because it’s too rat
shit crazy and strange to dissect neatly.
The Seventh Curse is about a Hong Kong doctor/adventurer named
Yuan Chen-Hsieh (Siu-Ho Chin (Fist of Legend)) who travels to the
jungles of Thailand looking for an herbal treatment for AIDS only to stumble
upon a human sacrifice ceremony by a local tribe. Their leader/God is a rotting skeleton
creature that eats the people thrown to it.
The doc decides to save the pretty woman on the chopping block but as a
consequence starts a massive battle between his group of explorers and the
tribe. Yuan is captured, made to swallow
his own bullets and the things start to fire from inside of him. Fortunately he’s saved by the woman he
rescued from the ceremony through some magic boob shenanigans (you read that
right). He recovers but a year later the
bullets start to pop from his insides once again. So he must travel back to Thailand to find a
cure for his curse.
As you can see the story involves a lot of supernatural shit
so you kind of just have to go with the flow.And that goes for all aspects of this thing.Shit will take a sudden left turn and either
you’re on board or you’re not.For
example, Chow Yun-Fat (Once a Thief) makes an appearance as Yuan’s professorial
pipe smoking friend/mentor.You think
he’s there simply for support and some guidance but then he abruptly shows up
towards the end with a bazooka ready to blow away some demons.Or the villain transforms from a skeleton into
a bizzarro KISS costume version of a xenomorph.There’s another nod to Alien with a small-ish chest-burster-like
monster that munches its way into your throat and then erupts out of your
chest.Shit gets weird.
I’ve seen folks refer to this as an Indiana Jones-esque
picture and in a sense I can see that, especially if we’re talking about Temple of Doom.You have a doctor (MD in
this case, not PHD) venturing to an exotic location for one purpose but unexpectedly
gets caught up in a local human sacrifice ceremony and becomes cursed.Yuan is smugger and more serious than Jones
though.He’s also even more casual about
murdering people.This obnoxious
reporter (Maggie Cheung (Hero)) tags along and ultimately gets captured who
would be a stand in for damsel-in-distress Willie Scott, except, well, she
shows up with a huge arsenal of weapons and isn’t afraid to use them.You have dark creepy caves, ancient ruins, a
horde of followers willing to kill for their master, booby traps, exaggerated
lighting, etc.But really this is its
own demented mashup of ideas from different sources which I’m sure include
Chinese myths and legends.
Truth be told this is more of an action film than
horror.There are certainly horror
elements and scenes but most of the time it’s martial arts fighting.Don’t get me wrong though, it’s great.And of course, there’s crossover like when
our heroes go hand to hand with the xenomorph creature at the finale.
This is also an effects heavy movie that leans to the gorier
side.For example, a scout is walking
through the jungle when he sets off a booby trap.A rope wraps around each one of his legs
throwing him into the air and tearing him right in half.Ouch.Plus
there’s gross out stuff like one explorer gets some mysterious goo poured on
him and his face starts to bubble.He
tears off his flesh to reveal hundreds of worms pouring out of him.Nasty.The effects are kinda cheap but goddamn charming as hell.I mean the evil skeleton lord is obviously a
large marionette puppet with multiple people pulling on strings to animate him
but man do they sell the shit out of it.
When I found out afterward that this is from Ngai Choi Lam,
the same director as Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky and The Cat, everything
quickly made sense.He has a dark sense
of humor and insane way of crafting a story.I love how much energy he brings to the production and this film is no
exception.The fights, effects,
cinematography, it’s so excitingly executed that it sucks you into a world you
didn’t even know you wanted to be sucked into.
Now, admittedly I was sorta lost half the time because they
throw so much at you without much explanation.The general plot I get but the details I have no idea.This includes the title.I think it relates to the number of bullets
inside of Yuan and the seventh and final one is the deathblow that will
eventually kill him?Not sure but hey, the
thing is it’s ok.I had a blast
anyway.Let it take you for a ride.If you’re looking for something different
then you’ve found it.This…film…is…fucking…wild.
What I Liked: I really dig the nasty ass production
design (Gary Wissner (Last Man Standing, I Know What You Did Last Summer))
and set decoration (George R. Nelson (Apocalypse Now, Big Trouble in Little China)). Even though they did a
bunch of filming in a real textile mill from the early 1800’s they amped up almost
every environment on screen to be filthy as fuck. Not only is there grime, cobwebs and trash
strewn about but there are also puddles of muddy gross water, moisture dripping
from the ceilings and pools of blood red water. As if that wasn’t enough this takes place
during the summer so it’s like a hundred degrees in the mill. All the workers are sweating profusely, have
greasy hair and sooty faces. Lastly, the
fantastic decrepit graveyard next door continues the theme by being waterlogged
and overgrown with weeds. A layer of fog
in most locations pushes the sinister haunted house vibes over the top. This is one of the most surface level
disgusting goddamn films I’ve ever set eyes on.
Most of the acting isn’t anything to write home about except
for two performances.One is the rat
exterminator played by Brad Dourif (Child’s Play 2) who gets pleasure
out of his work.Dourif is always
excellent and he brings his usual intensity with a particularly strange scene
where he delivers a lengthy monologue about the Viet Cong torturing prisoners
of war with live hungry rats. The other
standout is the mill foreman, Warwick, played by Stephen Macht (The Monster Squad).He’s a mean sonuvabitch who
doesn’t give a shit about his workers or the conditions they toil in.He’ll fire someone on the spot over nothing
with a cold delivery.Naturally he’s a
creep as well who tries to get in the pants of the women who work at the
mill.And his Maine accent, man, that
accent.It’s the same exaggerated one
that Fred Gwynne sports in Pet Sematary that pop culture loved to make
fun of in the 90’s.I can’t really
describe it but it’s unique, instantly recognizable, pretty funny sounding and
pretty distracting.Anyway, Warwick
doesn’t totally make sense as a character.If he were simply a rough boss that would be one thing but when people
start dying he just doesn’t care.It’s
beyond being self-centered because towards the end he completely loses his mind
and fights off others who try to help him when he gets injured.Maybe he had a mental break.I dunno, even though Warwick feels
nonsensical Macht chews that scenery right up making him by far the most
entertaining character in the piece.
When we finally get to see the creature that’s been lurking
in the basement of the mill it looks damn nice.I don’t think this is much of a spoiler that it’s a massive ten foot long
rat/bat thing.The puppet/animatronic
they built is like if a rat survived a nuclear war with its white eyes, gnarly
grotesque skin, barbed hair and enormous claws.With all the quick cutting we never get a great look at it though which
is a shame because I would’ve loved to have soaked this beast in more.Perhaps the thing didn’t look as good as I
think it does so the filmmakers decided to cut around it. Or it could’ve been they only got a small
amount of usable footage and had to make the most of it.Either way I like this guy.
Kickass title. And I
appreciate that some of the mill workers do in fact work the graveyard
shift.Now, the graveyard situated next
door is pure coincidence as far as I can tell, however, what’s underneath it
does add an extra layer of meaning.
What I Didn’t Like: Not the best script.There’s very little story which amounts to a
drifter blowing into a small town to work at a textile mill only to discover
his boss is a psycho and something’s killing the workers.Everyone is fairly one dimensional including
the protagonist (David Andrews (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)) who’s
incredibly bland and has maybe two pages of dialogue total in the entire
movie.There are head scratching parts
too like the scene where Warwick asks the exterminator to set rat traps in the
graveyard for some reason (does the mill own the graveyard?).Through sheer dumb luck the exterminator gets
killed totally by accident but it’s setup like Warwick knew this was going to
happen somehow?Some of these
shortcomings could be chalked up to this being based on a short story (by
Stephen King) so they didn’t have a ton to work with.At the same time the picture isn’t remarkably
well written in general.
Similar to the above the editing is clumsy at times.A couple of scenes end awkwardly and there
are occasional fades to black that make it seem like a TV movie.
Overall Impressions: While this isn’t anything
amazing there’s definitely a fun time to be had here.As long as you don’t expect too much and are
down with a giant creature munching on some dudes this can deliver a few gasps
and chuckles, especially if you don’t like rats.Personally, I don’t have that fear (although
I wouldn’t love to encounter a thousand of them…or one very large one for that
matter), but I do fucking hate spiders (and bugs in general) so in that sense
this one is in the same vein as Arachnophobia.You know, a film that puts a common phobia of
a specific animal or insect into overdrive.And you get a kick out of it because it’s the fear juice that
excites.It might be worth your time if
that sounds up your alley.
What I Liked: Really nice atmosphere. The small coastal New England town of
Potter’s Bluff always seems to be overcast with fog around, the buildings are
kinda shabby and old and the residents are slightly quirky. This isn’t a place that appears normal on the
surface but if you zoom in there’s a dark side hiding beneath. The eeriness is on top here and it sets a
great mood where you’re thrown a bit from the start.
Solid performances all around.Jack Albertson (The Poseidon Adventure)
plays one of the leads as Dobbs, a confident slightly arrogant mortician.He loves fixing up corpses to make them look
beautiful for their funeral and burial.He has a penchant for getting absorbed in his work and playing tunes
from the 30’s and 40’s.He aids the town
sheriff, Dan (James Farentino (Bulletproof)), in trying to determine why
dead bodies keep turning up.Dan is our
protagonist who definitely has a Chief Brody from Jaws thing going
on.He’s a very affable everyman type,
wants to do the right thing, is friendly with the townsfolk, not above asking
for help, is not a rookie cop but perhaps new the current post and thrown into
an impossible situation when strange occurrences and murders start happening.I dig Farentino’s genuine shock and confusion
over everything.He plays it more
grounded than you would normally see in a horror movie.
One thing this film is semi-famous for (in that the film
itself is semi-famous) are the Stan Winston effects and yea, they look
fantastic.The two big ones are a needle
gets jammed through an eye (totally squirm worthy) and a scene where Dobbs
entirely reconstructs a deceased woman’s face.We start with a mutilated visage and over many dissolves we see him
remove the destroyed flesh and build the entire thing back up from skeleton to
muscle to skin.It’s impressive as hell
and a touch unsettling because it looks real.Unfortunately there’s one effect that was added in post-production to
punch up the violence where acid is injected into someone’s nose.Winston was not around so someone else did it
and it looks crappy.
Cool score by Joe Renzetti (The Buddy Holly Story,
Child’s Play).The opening uses this
melodic lilting piano led track with strings that sounds beautiful.There’s an undercurrent of sadness to it that
fits the picture.Later we get more of
your usual string drones and stabs to build good tension.Scenes tend to linger maybe a little longer
than they need to but the soundtrack almost single handedly keeps the suspense
flowing in a couple of spots.
What I Didn’t Like: While the plot is neat it does
get sorta muddy.I won’t go into
spoilers but you need to connect your own dots to a degree.The information they provide doesn’t explain
everything so if you take the movie as is it doesn’t exactly make sense.You might get a kick out of this if you like
coming up with theories to fill in plot holes.I’ll admit I was doing this afterward to try to fit everything together
and I think you can make it work.
Overall Impressions: This is a unique and unusual
take on a zombie picture.It’s a very Tales
From the Crypt type concept that also invokes another film that I won’t
name because that’ll give too much away.I like how subtly creepy the town and inhabitants are.You know they’re doing terrible shit but you
can’t put your finger on why.Sheriff
Dan’s pursuit of the truth drives the mystery and he seems like such a good guy
you wanna see him succeed even though you know nothing good will come of
it.He knows his town is venturing down
a dark ass path but he can’t stop it.The whole thing ends up being more tragic than anything else.Don’t leave this one in the ground.Dig it up and check it out.
What I Liked: I mean c’mon, Robin McLeavy (Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) as Lola is fucking nuts. She’s a completely deranged high school teen
who tortures the boys she fancies. McLeavy
totally commits sure, but she plays it with a bratty spoiled layer that makes
the character more believable and more pathetic. It’s a fine line to walk where sometimes an
actor can do the wackiest shit they can think of with the wackiest delivery but
there’s nothing behind it. McLeavy gives
Lola life by dialing in the madness just right.
One moment she can be yelling at her victim demanding him to cry, carve
her initials in his chest and throw salt on his wounds while quipping “not too
much, it’s supposed to be bad for you” and then later she can be gazing
lovingly at her partner-in-crime father calling him her prince. This lady makes you goddamn hate her so fucking
much but you also wanna keep going because you wonder what in the hell she has
cooked up next. McLeavy is so intense,
cruel, tenacious and even darkly humorous, without being overly theatrical,
that you can’t look away.
Everyone delivers a magnificent performance here but I
definitely want to highlight the two other mains.Xavier Samuel (Elvis (2022)) as Brent
is Lola’s target and he has a haunted past where he recently got into a car
accident that killed his father.His
pain is still immense which helps him clench through all the heinous shit Lola
throws at him.When he’s captured his
throat is injected with bleach so he can’t talk or scream.Samuel has to do almost the entire movie silent
using his face and body to convey everything he’s thinking and feeling and it’s
incredible.He’s writhing in pain but
can’t yell out which makes the proceedings even more disturbing.That death stare he gives his captors could
pierce steel.And finally John Brumpton
(Romper Stomper) who plays Lola’s father is the most mysterious
character of the bunch.He’s utterly
subservient to his daughter doing whatever horrible thing she requests.While you can tell he gets a kick out of inflicting
pain you don’t know if it’s because he’s glad to see his daughter happy and
relishes spending time together in a shared activity or if he’s just as fucked
up and would be doing this kinda crap on his own anyway.His meekness doesn’t rule him which is
significant for the character to work.I
think he does get pleasure out of hurting others but is also scared of Lola.Scared of what she’ll do to him if he
disobeys and scared of letting her down.Additionally, there’s a scene or two that possibly hints at an
incestuous relationship so who knows what the fuck the deal is with these two.
This is a well made film, especially in the editing.The filmmakers were smart to intercut the
dreadful torture with other events occurring at the same time so we get regular
breaks.Brent is supposed to be at his
high school dance when he gets kidnapped so we see how the night was supposed
to go down by showing his friend attending with a goth adjacent girl he has a
huge crush on.They’re awkward towards
each other at first but then they get to boozing and blazing and blast some
metal and they have, well not exactly a magical night, but an eventful evening
where they lean on each other for support.His date’s going through a tough time right now.Meanwhile Brent’s mother, his girlfriend and
a cop are distraught looking for him.Splitting up Lola’s scenes like this makes the whole thing easier to
take in.Plus music plays a big role and
is used constantly throughout to amplify the characters’ emotions. Lola has her favorite song that’s played
several times called “Not Pretty Enough” by Kasey Chambers with the singer fixating
over what’s wrong with her that she’s always ignored.Set design is another superb element with
Lola’s house decorated like a high school gym ready for the big dance.There’s a banner, disco ball, food and
everything.She even dons a paper
crown.This is a very nice looking
production.
What I Didn’t Like: Now, this is a torture movie and
I’m not really into those generally speaking.As can be expected they don’t shy away from the gore and dish out some
nasty ass punishment.But I understand
the idea is to make the audience feel uncomfortable, make you beg to see Lola
and her father get their comeuppance and get a rush of relief when that happens.I just wish they didn’t go quite so hard with
how they treat Brent.This one’s
borderline for me.If they pushed it any
further I probably would’ve disengaged.
Overall Impressions: Fortunately the characters,
performances and technical filmmaking are strong enough to make me ok with how
damn mean the torture stuff is.At times
this piece gets downright brutal so this picture certainly isn’t for everyone. But if you give it a chance and stick with it
you’ll be rewarded.
What I Liked: It’s all competently shot and the
performances are fine and actually, I quite like the soundtrack by Michael
Small (The Star Chamber, Marathon Man), blah, blah, blah, moving on…
What I Didn’t Like: Everything else.
Overall Impressions: Man, I got a beef with this
movie.The premise involves a guy named
Hoover (Anthony Hopkins (Transformers: The Last Knight)) who thinks his dead
daughter, Audrey Rose, has been reincarnated into the body of an eleven year
old girl named Ivy (Susan Swift).When
he confronts her parents, Janice (Marsha Mason (Nick of Time)) and Bill
(John Beck (Thunder in Paradise)), they think he’s crazy and don’t want
anything to do with him.Hoover is not
dissuaded though and keeps calling and showing up at their insanely luxurious
NYC apartment.Ivy suddenly has these
intense nightmares that she can’t wake from and the only thing that seems to
calm her down is Hoover calling her Audrey Rose and cradling her letting her
know her father is here to take care of her.
Audrey Rose was killed in a terrible car accident where she
was trapped inside in the overturned vehicle and burned alive when she was
five.So Ivy’s freakouts are her running
around screaming and clawing at windows.Her hands even show burn marks during one particular episode.Bill thinks she touched the hot radiator in
the chaos of the scene.She also stares
into the mirror in a daze and says the name “Audrey Rose” over and over (by
this point it’s a name she’s heard countless times from the people around her).In another incident Ivy is at school where
they construct an enormous fifteen foot tall snowman and build a circle of fire
to melt him (I’ve never heard or seen this type of thing before, is this common?)
only to have a possessed Ivy start to crawl into the fire.Don’t worry, she’s stopped just in time.All this stuff is supposed to be proof that something
supernatural is occurring and that Audrey Rose and Ivy occupy the same vessel.
Janice and Bill argue about what’s going on with Janice going
back and forth on being a believer.Bill
thinks Hoover is a kook.Meanwhile Hoover
is obsessed with the notion that his dead daughter is alive in this other girl
and will stop at nothing to be with her.He even resorts to kidnapping which is how we eventually land in the
lengthy courtroom drama portion of the film.
Now, even though the movie tries to be coy it's obvious
they’re saying that Audrey Rose is indeed sequestered inside Ivy’s body and she
manifests herself during sleep.But to
me this all appears to be mental illness.Everything shown to us can be explained with that reasoning.What’s maddening is it’s never brought
up.The closest we come is the family
doctor recommends Ivy see a therapist.In my opinion that isn’t enough to tackle her increasingly bizarre and
disturbing behavior.I mean Ivy is injuring
herself when she slips into a manic state by banging against windows, knocking
over furniture, falling down stairs and reaching for fire.This is really fucking serious.
Jesus, I wanted to jump into this thing and tell everyone
“STOP!This girl is sick and needs
immediate medical attention!What’s
wrong with all of you?!”Goddammit I
hate every character because no one does the right thing.They all continue to harm this poor girl
who’s suffering with Janice possibly being the most damaging culprit.At one point she admits in open court that
she believes Ivy is Hoover’s reincarnated daughter and then two scenes later
she tells Ivy no, that’s not true.The waffling
on that is extremely destructive.Hell,
entertaining the very notion to Ivy that she’s in fact another person is dangerous.
The court case may be the worst part.Hoover’s attorney’s actual for real defense
in the kidnapping of a child is that she’s this guy’s deceased daughter so it’s
all ok.It’s an unprovable theory.How is the jury supposed to receive
that?Then they bring in a hypnotist to put
Ivy under to get to the root of the matter which again, how is this
allowed?As an aside, it’s rich that the
judge is fine continuing with Hoover’s ludicrous argument but is wary of
hypnotism and only reluctantly goes along with it.Well guess what?*Spoilers* During the session the
doctor performing the procedure is able to bring out Audrey Rose but the
process is too much for the girl and she dies.Fuck!
Despite what you see elsewhere I wouldn’t classify this as a
horror movie.It’s more of a drama
thriller.The film wants it both ways
where it definitely believes the supernatural aspect of Audrey Rose being
inside Ivy yet doesn’t provide any unquestionable substantiating evidence to
back it up.In my opinion the film doesn’t
present as a mysterious curious case like it thinks it does.Not enough spooky or inexplicable shit happens.So the whole thing is a frustrating as hell
situation.
It is incredibly sad and awful that every single person in
Ivy’s life fails her.Her parents, her
teachers, her doctors, the courts, they all not only drop the ball they blow it
to smithereens.This innocent person who
is sick through no fault of her own does not get the treatment she deserves.Nor does she get the protection or respect
from the ones most responsible and closest to her, her parents.Hoover is a sinister sack of shit who never
should’ve been able to worm his way into their lives the way he did.Fuck all these motherfuckers and fuck this
movie.
Side note: from Robert Wise, the director of The Sound of
Music, West Side Story and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
What I Liked: David Prior directed the shit out of
this movie. It looks beautiful, the
casting is good, the performances are great, the editing is mostly well done,
the atmosphere is unsettling, there are many varied locations, the production
design is cool, the pacing is methodical, etc.
Prior’s background involves a lot of behind-the-scenes documentaries
including the making of a bunch of David Fincher films. All that time studying other excellent
filmmakers must have given him a unique education on the craft where he could
pick up techniques through osmosis. So
with this picture you have this interesting blend of styles like what if David
Fincher shot a Wes Craven script? The
technical aspects are far and away the film’s best quality.
They really went for something.Even though I don’t think this thing comes
together I admire its ambitious story.I
don’t think I’ve come across a horror film exactly like it.
What I Didn’t Like: Ok folks this is gonna get dicey
so I’ll do my best to explain why this bird doesn’t land for me before going
into spoilers.There are essentially two
films happening at once (you could conceivably argue three films with the
ending).One is about an urban legend called
the Empty Man where you can summon him by whistling across the top of an empty
bottle on a bridge at night and think intensely about him while doing so.You know, similar to Bloody Mary or Candyman
where you stare into a mirror and say their name five times to curse
yourself.Over the course of three days
the Empty Man will stalk you and eventually kill you.Plot two is about a teen girl who goes
missing and an ex-cop friend of the family, James (James Badge Dale (Little
Woods)), tries to track her down only to discover she was involved with a
cult obsessed with the Empty Man.This
story is definitely the more interesting one because it builds wonderful
mystery and suspense.James ventures
deeper and deeper into what this dangerous organization is and the weird ass
supernatural shit they’re tapping into.While
the two stories are dependent on one another they don’t exactly link up
successfully.The payoff ends up being
the worst of both worlds with the movie not committing to being either a full
on slasher monster situation or a creepy blood thirsty cult jam.For some the ending could tie everything
together in a mind blowing way but for me it’s this awkward beast of curiosity
and disappointment.
*Spoilers* Alright, so we go through all this
sleuthing and all this building up of the Empty Man and all this mounting tension
to come to the conclusion that basically none of it is real.Well maybe some of it is real.Honestly I don’t fucking know.It turns out the cult manifested James, an
actual adult human person, into existence when we met him three days
prior.He’s been kept locked up in a
room for that time.So everything we’ve
gone through with him are fabricated memories.The reason for this is the cult wants to use James to communicate with
and worship the Empty Man, which is some sort of supernatural being.This group has been around for hundreds (or
thousands?) of years and uses a human bridge to relay communication between the
Empty Man and his followers.Their
current messenger is dying (this is what that twenty minute opening in Bhutan
relates to) and sometimes they’ve had to wait a long ass time for someone else
to come along so they decided to create one in James.In essence James was the Empty Man all along.Truthfully guys, I don’t have a goddamn clue
if I got any of this right.If I did
then this is only slightly better than the god awful it-was-all-a-dream or
it-was-all-in-your-head trope.At least
this doesn’t dismiss the existence of the Empty Man or any of the supernatural
shit.But at the same time it effectively
negates everything you just watched.Nor
does it explain why the Empty Man fucks with and then kills people like in a
standard horror picture, or why it takes him three days to attack, or why a
cursed person can possess others to kill for them, or why all the deaths are made
to look like suicides or accidents or bizarre acts, or ok, you get the
idea.We don’t really learn anything
about this creature.Why it does what it
does is never explained.Or maybe they
did and I missed it. Another question
you might be asking is why does the cult wanna get with the Empty Man in the
first place?World domination?Superpowers?Great wealth?Not sure.Again, they may have said but if they did I
missed it.
Overall Impressions: Man, I want to like this.Prior and co elevated the hell out of a not
very good script.From what I gather the
graphic novel it’s based on is pretty different so maybe something got lost in
translation.Or it could be as much of a
mess as this.All the goodwill the
filmmakers build up by doling out the mystery at the right pace to keep you
interested unfortunately kinda gets flushed down the toilet with the ending.
There’s a real slim chance a re-edit could’ve saved this but
that would’ve been very difficult.Plus
I think the finale is fully intended to tie all the pieces together.It’s not something you can simply toss aside.So we’re forced to deal with a peculiar
hybrid mashup that doesn’t work as is and the separate components probably
aren’t strong enough to stand on their own either.
Ironically The Empty Man isn’t empty but it ain’t
full either.I completely understand why
it bombed.When this got dumped out in
2020 the few people that saw it did not care for it.I mean marketing the film must’ve been a
nightmare as well.It doesn’t fall
neatly into a category so I don’t envy the people who had to try to sell this strange
complex horror/thriller premise.And it
doesn’t help that the title is so generic with other “Man” movies like Slender
Man, The Boogeyman and The Bye Bye Man released around the same
time.I know I confused all of them.
If any of this sounds intriguing then go ahead and check out
this fascinating oddity of a picture.For most folks though I can’t recommend it.
What I Liked: Once the action gets going it doesn’t
really let up. Honestly I thought this
was going to be a capturing and torturing type scenario but thankfully that’s
not the case. It’s a chase movie with crazy
backwoods killers running after a group of lost young people in the mountains
of West Virginia. The pace is quick
because the characters always have to be on the move if they want to
survive/catch their prey.
Most of the effects are done practically which is a nice
thing to see from an early 2000’s production.Using crude CGI for almost everything, regardless of how it looked, was
very popular then. But since Stan
Winston produced and did the effects it appears they mainly did stuff for real
here (except for one showoff-y death with computer help).So scenes like strangling someone with barbed
wire, getting shot in the leg, being set on fire and stabbing someone in the
gut with a wrench all look great.The showpiece
is supposed to be the three hillbilly villains who are all deformed with messed
up skin, scraggily hair, gnarly teeth and so forth but we never get that good
of a look at them.That leads me to my
next point.
Interestingly the filmmakers decided to keep the grotesque
appearance of the inbreds mysterious.We
pretty much never get a shot head on held for a decent length.All the way through to the end we see
closeups of their bodies or hands or the backs of their heads or wide shots of
them in the distance or glimpses of their faces that only flash for a couple of
frames before cutting away.I don’t know
if this was intentional from the start, if they didn’t have faith in the
designs during production or if these bastards were so nasty looking the
producers or higher ups decided to (or perhaps forced to) cut around their
faces as much as possible.On one hand I
dig the mystique this builds where your imagination kind of fills in what you
can’t see.On the other hand it’s just a
bizarre decision to stick to for the entire runtime.In the end I think I might like it?It’s a little different.
Gotta say the set design is fantastic.The dilapidated shack of horrors that our
leads stumble onto is wonderfully filthy and gross with plenty of body parts in
jars and trash everywhere and vehicles strewn about from previous victims.
What I Didn’t Like: This is a very straightforward
slasher picture with not much going on story-wise.You got your standard group of
twenty-somethings roaming the backroads, getting stranded and fighting for
their lives.That’s fine.What’s unfortunate is the mountain men aren’t
given any backstory or personality.They’re simply silent murderous ogres who have little interaction with
each other.We don’t know why they do
what they do or what their deal is at all.That with the shot selection and editing choice to not show them very
much makes these guys sorta forgettable.
Overall Impressions:Wrong Turn is a
workmanlike slasher.It’s not bad but
it’s not great either.I mean it’s
competently made and everything but a bit flat.They don’t expand on the obvious influences of Deliverance, Texas
Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes or subvert expectations by
throwing in a left turn twist or anything.It’s right down the middle.
Maybe the most intriguing thing is that for some reason this
spawned five sequels and a reboot.I
only vaguely remember hearing about the original when it came out so to have
that kind of legacy is a touch surprising.And don’t worry, we won’t be taking a detour down that mountain road.