The Wrong Turn franchise began in 2003 under the direction of Rob Schmidt. In 2007 the franchise became straight-to-DVD releases, first starting with Wrong Turn 2 and director Joe Lynch, before moving to Declan O’Brien for Wrong Turn 3 – 5. Wrong Turn 5 in 2012 was an absolute disaster, but now that Valeri Milev took the reigns for Wrong Turn 6, I definitely thought it was worse checking out. Maybe with a new director and a two year break the franchise would return better than ever?
Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort is written by Frank H. Woodward and directed by Valeri Milev. Cast members include Anthony Ilott, Chris Jarvis (“The Bill”), Aqueela Zoll (Killjoy Goes to Hell), Sadie Katz, Rollo Skinner, Billy Ashworth, Harry Belcher, Joe Gaminara, Roxanne Pallett (Lake Placid 3), Radoslav Parvanov, Danko Jordanov (The Hills Run Red), and Asen Asenov.
In Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort, “a sudden and mysterious inheritance brings Danny and his friends to Hobb Springs, a forgotten resort deep in the West Virginia hills,” and you can guess where it goes from there!
**[Warning: There are spoilers ahead!]**
I had to digest everything I saw on my TV before I began typing of this review. Wrong Turn 6 is… weird. Yeah, very weird. I mean, it started out great. Almost immediately there’s an attractive woman getting nude in the forest and then almost immediately after that she gets barbed wire to the face and cut in half. Right off the bat it’s important for a film to grab the viewer’s attention so they don’t turn the channel or fast forward. Well, that certainly got my attention. Now, moving from a gratuitous nudity and graphic violence standpoint to one that is visually stimulating, the film then shifts focus to the main characters arriving at The Hot Springs Resort, an old, beautiful, HUGE resort in the middle of the woods in West Virginia. As someone who goes for car rides just to see new places, I found this backdrop to be eye catching and furthered my interest in the movie.
When the main and supporting characters – the good guys – are introduced, I was pleasantly surprised to find that all of them are redeemable and enjoyable in some sort of way. Except Jillian (played by Roxanne Pallett). She was the worst one, but somehow she ended up being one of my favorites. This is, however, unfortunate because as with all horror movies, this means people that I think are pretty all right are going to be brutally hacked to pieces at an alarming rate. Then we meet the other leads – the bad guys – and I found them to be the most interesting of all! Jackson (played by Chris Jarvis) and Sally (played by Sadie Katz) are fantastic in their performances as cannibalistic, evil, scheming murders. I kind of want to be in their family, minus the incest. They’re a stark contrast to the other main couple – Danny (played by Anthony Ilott) and Toni (played by Aqueela Zoll) – and I just wanted them all to get along, well, better than they did… Fantastic writing and contrasts from Frank H. Woodward really helped to bring the characters to life.
From that point on… Wrong Turn 6 kind of lost me. Two new important chapters in the cannibal hillbilly backstory are introduced, one which makes sense and one that is so completely out of left field it made my head spin. Leading up to these two revelations, the movie almost becomes a Vincent Price movie. Lots of mystery and an eerie feeling, hidden doorways, strange noises and visions, ya know, the usual. When the movie gets back on point, it is revealed that not only is there a whole town of mutant hillbillies in the woods, but they’ve also built a temple inside The Hot Springs Resort where they have rituals to promote fertility. I was on board with the hillbilly town because it is a somewhat realistic progression of the Wrong Turn nuisances, but the temple lost me. Adding any sort of religious or cult-like aspect to this movie – whether good or bad – is just a bad idea. The wrong turn to go in my opinion. Just as Halloween fans were mad when there was a Michael Myers Cult in Halloween 6, and rabid human fans were made when Rec 3 introduced religious as a tool against the zombie-like people, cannibals are cannibals and the story should roughly stay on those lines.
And this movie has a lot of sex. I mean, a lot of sex! Someone even gets smothered by a vagina near the end of the movie. Watching this in a house full of people, I felt dirty, almost like I was watching porn and everyone else in the house knew it. I do watch porn, with my headphones on, but I don’t watch horror films for almost non-stop sex scenes. I watch it for the suspense, the gore, and the adrenaline rush you get when good characters (like the ones in Wrong Turn 6) are being chased by the killers. Sure, a sex scene or two are a common tool in horror films to heighten the senses a little bit, but this movie borders on soft core porn. I want the gore! I want the blood! I want people getting shot in the face by arrows. Yes, this movie had a few arrows to the face, but I was looking for more. I’d say, actually, that Wrong Turn 6 was a little underwhelming, a little milder than the previous entries. Not to mention the horrible CGI blood in the beginning. Yeesh!
Overall, I think Wrong Turn 6 is a step up from the previous installment. Minus the new plot point that doesn’t fit and the underwhelming death scenes, it was a pretty solid effort! I’m not too thrilled with the ending, but I understand that it had to happen if the franchise is to continue. But, why Danny? Why?! I’m glad to see One Eye, Saw Tooth, and Three Finger back again. I’m going to rate Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort a 7.5 out of 10.
