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Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

Dir: Joe Lynch

It turns out that there are still some pesky inbred cannibals roaming those wild West Virginian forests, despite the actions of our ‘heroes’ from the first film, and wouldn’t you know it but a TV crew has decided that the best place to film the pilot for a proposed survival/reality TV show (named “Apocalypse”) is right on their doorstep!

So as the volunteers, the crew and the kick ass/ex-army host of the show, Dale Murphy (Henry Rollins), prepare to pave the way for their 15 minutes of fame the hungry family of mutant munchers are setting their traps and sharpening their weapons. Grub up!....

 

I saw no good in the fact that the pretty lousy “Wrong Turn” (a film where bunch of rutting, animalistic killing machines capture a sexy female, tie her up and then…leave her alone and safe so her hunky new love can come and rescue her) made quite a bit of money and became such a critically praised exercise.
It was a sad thing.
But actually, as it turns out, it was a good thing as the success of the film meant that a sequel was green-lighted and so we thankfully have a wonderful little movie called “Wrong Turn 2: Dead End” to enjoy.
Life is a twisted and funny old thing at times.

First time director Joe Lynch and his entire crew and cast do everything right that the first film did wrong.
From the superlative opening (where real life ‘American Idol’ contestant Kimberly Caldwell, as one of the “Apocalypse” contestants, offers up a very good, and unflattering, turn as herself), where we are given not only some wonderful gore but cheeky black comedy as our cannibals casually drag their ‘lunch’ back home, to the blood drenched finale “Wrong Turn 2” delivers the kind of un-PC twisted entertainment that is all to rare today. Not only that it’s done with a true love of the genre.

The digs at the inanity of Reality TV are rather heavy handed and obvious, but there is nothing subtle in the film anyway. And the entire “Apocalypse” set-up is so entertaining in it’s chest-beating crassness that lots of fun is had before we even see our next cannibal.
The main source of pleasure here is Metal/Punk singer and part-time actor Henry Rollins, who does a wonderful job as the tough as nails military hard-ass host.
Rollins' character could so easily have (and indeed similar characters have before) been a hateful, annoying, arsehole, but then a key dynamic in the movie, as well as one of its major assets, would have been lost.
Thankfully though Dale Murphy is an amazingly likeable guy, who uses his threatening manner to sly comic effect to put those contestants who are too full of themselves back in their proper place on the food chain.
And of course it does no harm that his character is also a cool kicker of much mutant ass and Rollins’ is obviously having a complete ball while running through the woods, camouflaged up, shotgun ready.

After the initial set-up the film does tend to meander a little bit as we walk around lots of trees, but we at least get to know some of the contestants a bit better. And amazingly, for the most part, we actually get to really like these guys ‘n’ gals. (again, unlike the first film).
As such we have that (rare) dilemma of wanting a gory body count at the same time as wishing it could actually be provided by characters other than most of these ones.
Lynch, obviously knowing his market and history, also provides some welcome nudity during this set-up to add that little naughty something to keep the energy flowing.
Exploitation elements are always welcome and even John Carpenter felt the need to open his sublime, Slasher well-spring, "Halloween" with a pair of very fine breasts.

Although the script is your basic of basics and the dialogue generally cliché and simple there are some marvellous little nuggets here and an astuteness to the screenplay (that I will mention later) that puts this film head and shoulders above most of its ilk.
The relationships between the characters (as they split into twos) is very well honed and one of the most enjoyable team-ups is between ‘extreme sports’ dude and walking phallus Jonesy (Steve Braun) and the ballsy, sexy, just back from Iraq Lesbian, Amber (Daniella Alonso) .
There is genuine affection here as we see the crass but generally nice Jonesy find a deeper relationship with a woman he now knows he has no chance of screwing than he would have had otherwise. And it’s not just Amber who smiles when he later delivers lines like “You’re a lesbian, where are your cohonies”, while they debate whether or not to steal a nice bit of BBQ.
And Jonesy also delivers perhaps the best description of a fart ever to grace a movie…a “shit ghost”.
In fact all of the later survivor team-ups are well written, enjoyable and well acted. There is simply nothing here to be negative about. Amazing!

“Wrong Turn 2” also puts a bit more flesh upon the bones of it’s killers this time as well, giving them some kind of family dynamic almost non-existent in the first film, in “Wrong Turn” we were simply let in on the fact that they happened to be related, and that was that, but in the sequel we actually see some of what being related, being part of a family, actually means. But don’t worry they’re still a bunch of sick-ass psychos with little on their minds but rutting, killing and munching.

Talking of which, it’s about time we got around to the real meat of this flick. The deaths, the gore and the grue.
Lynch has upped the gore and blood quota here in comparison to the earlier film but also manages to fit it all in without missing out (as I mentioned above) on the character moments.
Lots of blood sprays, slopping entrails, flesh piecing, missing body parts, found body parts, pulped body parts and exploding body parts are the name of the game here as yet again Lynch shows how expert he is at judging precisely what his audience wants from such a film.
It’s gore packed entertainment with it’s tongue in it’s mutated cheek.
But there is also a smattering of genuine violence here as well, like a joyously brutal slashing that truly delivers the brute, bloody punch any such film needs and it’s made even better by the more personal (rather than simply being cannibalistic loon) motivations for it.
It’s a kick ass scene of butchery that gets one hell of a far-out punch line.
Feel that love.

The one real fault with the film is the (now sadly frequent in horror films) use of cheap CGI.
Something that also messes with the ‘back to the 80’s Slasher in the woods’ feel Lynch has stated he was going for and has indeed pulled off (as best as you can in 2007) with perfection otherwise.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s thankfully an awful lot of actual appliance FX and blood used in “Wrong Turn 2” and it’s all pretty damn good and universally moist and messy.
But the dreaded curse of bad CGI does rear its head on a couple of occasions.
The worst offender is a CGI arrow effect (in a genuinely moving little moment actually) that’s pretty damn ropey and sadly distracts from the otherwise excellent scene in a pretty big way.
I guess the rule is…If you can’t pull something off without having to use sub-standard CGI then simply think of another idea. As even a compromise, 2nd choice, effect/death will be a damn sight better pulled off with solid, real-world, FX than any first choice idea carried out via ropey CGI.
But given it’s low(ish) budget origins the makers of “Wrong Turn 2” use as little CGI as we could have hoped for and the gore in general is great fun and a joy to wallow in.
And boy, it’s been far too long since we had a really good exploding body! Lovely!

There’s nothing deadly serious here (any seriousness comes from the death of a character you may have liked) and it’s obvious that Joe Lynch (a rabid horror fan, and it shows) just wanted to make a fun, gory, yucky, crowd pleasing popcorn flick.
And he pulls that off perfectly, and thankfully the film never pushes it’s humour too far.
This is the astuteness in the script I mentioned above.
“Wrong Turn 2” is not a parody, or a tedious exercise in ‘dude humour’, or a smug in-joke exercise in self-indulgence and nor is it a film drowning under the weight of knowing retro winks to the audience, something which swamped horror films in the late 90’s as film makers failed to see the difference between adding fun and light humour in small doses to lighten-up the tone of a basically grim storyline and simply taking the piss out of the genre and thus eviscerating it of any power to shock and even genuinely entertain beyond the realms of a freakin’ ‘knock knock’ joke.

So top marks to Joe Lynch, his writers (Alan McElroy, Turi Meyer, Al Septien) and his actors for managing the tough feat of making a film that manages to be gory, funny, nasty, sick and cool but one that is also respectful and, most importantly, genuine.
If you liked the first film you should like this sequel.
If you hated the first film you should still like this sequel. And that’s one hell of a job well done from any first time director.
Let’s hope Lynch can do such a good job again, as he could be a real gem in the crown of modern horror.