Though you can see the ending from miles behind it takes you through it's acts with the enormous energy the new slashers lack and is overall entertaining. It's gritty, scary and hugely suspenseful. Out of all the asinine shlock that's been released in the last ten years like the empty torture porn movies that have given horror a bad name I would much rather watch Wrong Turn to remind me that there are still some good people in the horror industry today. The defining moment of the entire film for me, was when a character said "need I remind you about a film called Deliverance". It's also very up front about the films it references which makes it's underlying playfulness and utter predictability that much more fun. But it never became innocuous and remained consistently scary. Personally I can't remember sitting through a generic slasher without wanting somebody to die within the first 10 minutes.
But the bonus in all this is decent performances of characters that you actually grow to care about as it unfolds. It fits tab A into slot B perfectly well with some fairly inventive direction, good shock horror, a fun set up and some good gore.
If completely conventional Wrong Turn nevertheless manages to get everything you'd expect and would want from a wilderness horror movie right. But Wrong Turn is none of the above apart from the latter. Originality is definitely not the film's strongest point and it's numerous similarities with vintage pieces like "Deliverance" and "The Hills Have Eyes" are so obvious that one might dismiss it as a stupid, lazy, ordinary, ruthless, derivative slasher flick. When he discovers that his new-found family partakes in ritualistic cannibalism he has to decide whether it's better to have family who eat people or no family at all.This throwback nature slasher is likely to be a love or hate piece among most horror fans. Finally, in 'Wrong Turn 6 - Last Resort' (2014), after a shock inheritance cheque sees Danny (Anthony Ilott) travel to a long-forgotten resort in the depths of the West Virginia Hills, the mysterious owner Sally (Sadie Katz) introduces him to relatives he never knew he had. In 'Wrong Turn 5 - Bloodlines' (2012), after arriving in the West Virginian town of Fairlake to party at the town's Mountain Man Festival, Julian (Oliver Hoare), Gus (Paul Luebke), Lita (Roxanne McKee), Cruz (Amy Lennox) and Billy (Simon Ginty) find themselves the recipients of gruesome deaths at the hands of a group of bloodthirsty mutant cannibals. When they begin to explore their surroundings the teens soon realise they are in deep trouble as one by one they fall victim to the gruesome exploits of the three cannibals known as Saw-Tooth (Scott Johnson), One-Eye (Dan Skene) and Three-Finger (Sean Skene). In the prequel 'Wrong Turn 4' (2011), a group of teenagers take shelter from a blizzard in an abandoned sanitorium, not realising it is home to a group of inbred mutant cannibals. The murderous violence escalates when a busload of dangerous criminals being transported from the nearby penitentiary - along with their escort, Sheriff Carver (Bill Moody) - also fall prey to the sick antics of the cannibal psychopath. In 'Wrong Turn 3 - Left for Dead' (2009), a group of college kids are attacked by the mutant cannibal hillbilly Three Finger (Borislav Iliev) while on a rafting trip at the Bluefish River. With the promise that the winner will walk away with $100,000, the contestants soon discover that what they are really fighting for is their survival against a family of hideously deformed inbred cannibals who plan to ruthlessly butcher them all. In 'Wrong Turn 2 - Dead End' (2007), a group of six contestants are thrown together for six days in a simulated post-apocalyptic wasteland due to their participation in a reality television show called 'The Ultimate Survivalist - The Apocalypse', hosted and produced by retired military commander Dale Murphy (Henry Rollins). But they soon discover they've been led into a horrible trap when they find an old cabin in the woods occupied by a gang of disfigured cannibals. Two of the group stay with the cars while the other four set out to find help. The car belongs to five friends on a camping trip. Distracted, he crashes into the back of a car stuck in the middle of the road, immobilised by barbed wire. In 'Wrong Turn' (2003), on the way to a job interview Chris (Desmond Harrington) takes an unexpected detour down an old dirt road to avoid a traffic jam.