Wrong Turn 6

I always had a peculiar fondness for the "Wrong Turn" franchise. It's certainly not the greatest horror series out there, but at least the installments all guarantee unpretentious and straightforward splatter-entertainment. After a new sequel every two year since 2007, the series seems to have halted since 2014, but I'll cheerfully keep watching more sequels when they come, even if they make another twenty-six of them! Part 6 makes one horrible mistake, however, namely that the new director Valeri Milev and writer Frank H. Woodward tried to tell an ambitious story with depth and character background. Bad idea; - the reasons why parts 2, 3 and 4 were so entertaining are that the plots are simple and the gore is utterly disgusting. Here, they come up with a far-fetched and completely implausible story about an introvert and half-depressed New Yorker inheriting a humongous hotel/spa resort in Hobb Springs, West-Virginia. Danny heads over there, together with a large group of his friends, and finds that the two caretakers are trying to show that he's part of a secluded (read: inbred) mountain family clan. Meanwhile, the trio of deranged mutant hillbillies from the previous films joyously slaughter Danny's friends and half of the nearby town. It's best not to contemplate too much about the "plot". Exactly how did a West-Virginian hillbilly-baby end up in New York? How can two incestuous freaks possibly run a giant hotel? Why isn't anybody investigating the dozens of missing person cases? Part 6 contains loads of gratuitous sex, usually immediately followed by revolting killings. The biker girl at the beginning is the prettiest actress of the bunch, especially naked, but she's only a random casualty whose face gets sawn in half with barbed wire. The special effects are okay, albeit often too extreme and sickening just for the sake of being sickening. I'm not complaining about that, though, since that is exactly why people like me are watching series like "Wrong Turn".

"I want to meet these people and find out what I'm all about." Danny (Iloot) has just found out that that he has inherited a mysterious resort in West Virginia. Him and his friends decide to take the trip to see what he has. When they arrive they meet Jackson and Sally (Katz) who claim to be his relatives. What starts out as an exciting new adventure take a deadly turn when family secrets are revealed. So...what can I say about Wrong Turn 6? If you have seen the others then you will know what to expect from this. There is a lot of gore and cannibalism. So if that is your thing then you will love this. When most horror franchises get into the 5th and 6th movies they turn more comedic. This one hasn't done that yet, I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. What I do know is that this is a series that didn't need one sequel let alone 5. Overall, if you have seen the others then you might at well watch this one. I give this a C-.

Wrong Turn 6 (2014)

* (out of 4)

The latest and so far worst in the series has Danny (Anthony Ilott) and six of his friends driving down south so that he can try and figure out about his past. Danny, an orphan, knows very little about his past but he receives word that he has "family" but they turn out to be the mutants from the five previous films.

WRONG TURN 6 is a really bad movie on so many levels that it's almost hard to believe that it could be worse than the third film. There are so many awful and annoying things about this movie it's a wonder that this here simply doesn't end the series. But, then again, when did quality ever determine how many sequels a series gets?

It's clear that the filmmakers wanted to take the series into a new direction but the "idea" behind this film is just as awful as the ideas behind the sixth film in the HALLOWEEN franchise. Lets see....where do we start? We can start with the screenplay, which is just one bad cliché after another as we get a boring plot dealing with the man being pulled into his "family" in hopes that they can continue in the future, which really makes no sense when you see that there are plenty of males and females already in the family so breeding isn't really an issue. The characters in the film are all incredibly boring and there's not a single one of them that is interesting. The performances aren't too bad but even the likes of Brando, Newman and Foster wouldn't have been able to do anything with this story.

The CGI gore effects are pretty bad and the kills aren't at all creative with most of them just alternate versions of stuff we have seen previously. The film does goes into overdrive when it comes to nudity with four different actresses taking off their clothes and there's some pretty weird and kinky sexual stuff going on. As for our three main killers, they're pretty much wasted here and without a doubt this is the most boring use of them in the series. Their make-up is also extremely bad. WRONG TURN 6 is without question the worst in the series and lets hope if they decide to continue they get back on track.

The fact that Wrong Turn became a franchise in the first place is baffling, not that I'm complaining. The original was essentially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets The Hills Have Eyes, and it was great for what it was, but hardly original enough to warrant the franchise treatment. Then it got an action-packed, direct-to-video sequel featuring Henry Rollins kicking all sorts of inbred cannibal ass, and it was awesome. Then the sequels kept coming and coming; Wrong Turn 4 has some merit in its own trashy sort of way, but 3 and 5 are among the worst "films" ever made. So going into Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort, you know not to expect top shelf cinema. But at the very least, you hope for some camp value, gratuitous nudity, and brutal kills.

Wrong Turn 6 tries something unique to the franchise, though: a psychological angle. It's a story about a guy who inherits a large mansion from an unknown relative, and the mansion turns out to be the home and breeding grounds for the grotesque inbred cannibals we've come to know and love. The psychological aspect comes into play with the mansion's caretakers, distant relatives to the protagonist, and how they gradually lure him away from the reality that he once knew, represented by his oblivious group of friends, and eventually seduce him into their demented family culture. It's quite disturbing actually, and there are plenty of wince-inducing scenes here. The problem is the writing, directing, and acting - the bare necessities for a good film.

The dialogue is horrendous; sadly, not in a so-bad-it's-funny sort of way. Things aren't much better acting-wise. It's not like great actors could have done much with a script like this, but these people are so unconvincing in their performances that the dialogue-driven scenes become downright aggravating to sit through. The sole exception is Sadie Katz as the caretaker Sally, who gives an unsettlingly sensual conviction to her character. She's by far the most alluring part of the film and deserves props for adding some credibility to the otherwise irredeemably bland cast. In regards to the directing, it can feel like you're watching a soft-core porn in one scene and then a graphic, torture-porn ridden snuff film in another. This may be due to the writing, but there's not even an attempt at building suspense. It just transitions from scene to scene with no regard to consistency in tone, pacing, or atmosphere; until finally, the movie ends.

Again, there are admittedly great ideas buried under the disastrous execution. The plot is a nice change of pace for the series, the deaths are gruesome, and the ending is no doubt unnerving. Sadly, Wrong Turn 6 is bereft of production value, and the subject matter is too bleak to be enjoyed in a campy, fun way. It's a dreary exercise in gratuity; from the glorious nudity to the grisly gore, it's all shock and no awe. If you've seen the previous five installments, you might as well watch this one - it's a hell of a lot better than 5. But don't go in hoping for a return to the schlocky entertainment value of 2 or the genuine terror of the original because you sure as hell won't find either in Wrong Turn 6.

The Wrong Turn series of films has been pretty dreadful for a while now, so I wasn't expecting anything good. However nothing could prepare me for how awful this is in every conceivable way.

The script, acting and direction are all completely amateurish. there are a couple of moments where the film is repulsive but it is never scary, suspenseful or even interesting. The new " twist" to the script seems completely tacked on and takes us far away from the original film. To be honest it feels like a film that was released as part of the wrong turn franchise as some kind of contractual obligation.

To compensate for this the film throws a large amount of pointless nudity at the audience. Fair enough, if that is your thing,but I wanted to watch a horror film and on that level it failed.