If you were a teenager with a DVD player and a healthy appetite for gore between 2007 and 2010, you know the drill. You’d walk past the pristine shelf of Oscar winners, head straight for the back corner of the rental store, and look for the red “Unrated” sticker. Among the endless direct-to-video sequels of The Curse of the Blair Witch 4 or The Hills Have Eyes 2 , one box stood out: a bloody handprint over a reality TV logo.
The film takes vicious aim at the voyeurism of reality TV. The showrunner (played brilliantly by The X-Files ’ Mitch Pileggi) refuses to stop filming even as his crew is slaughtered. He yells things like, "This is the highest rated season yet!" as a producer gets her face eaten. It’s a critique of how far producers will go for "authentic" content—turning tragedy into entertainment. wrong turn2
The twist? Three Finger, One Eye, and the newly introduced "Poker Face" (a terrifyingly strong mutant with a metal plate in his head) don’t like the cameras. They don’t like the noise. And they really don’t like the contestants. If you were a teenager with a DVD
Wrong Turn (2003) is a solid, atmospheric thriller. It has Stan Winston’s thumbprint and a great final girl. But it plays it safe. It follows the Hill Have Eyes formula beat for beat. The film takes vicious aim at the voyeurism of reality TV
What follows is 93 minutes of pure, unadulterated carnage as the mutants hunt the cast for sport, turning the game of survival into a very real—and very fatal—episode. Most direct-to-DVD sequels are soulless cash grabs. Wrong Turn 2 is different. Director Joe Lynch is a horror geek first and a director second. He understood the assignment.
Here is why the mutants of West Virginia deserve a second look. The premise is gloriously simple. A reboot of a reality show called The Ultimate Survivalist: Apocalypse Edition is filming in the backwoods of West Virginia. We have the archetypes: the washed-up ex-Marine (Henry Rollins, chewing scenery like it’s his last meal), the brash alpha male, the kind-hearted fat guy, the token goth girl, and the sweet farm girl.
Have you seen Wrong Turn 2 ? Did you think it was better than the original? Let me know in the comments below—just don’t invite me camping.