I don't understand how people making movies don't seek to improve things over time rather than adopting the mindset of other industries that seeks to make every new product cheaper and cheaper. Wrong Turn 3 and 4 were steps in the right direction, giving us a horror franchise with a lot of potential.
Wrong Turn 5 is a step in the wrong direction with an low budget and almost no attempt at telling a story. Some small town in Kentucky had its entire population disappear centuries ago. Now, kids celebrate a festival there every year that's a mixture of concert, wild free spirit and Halloween. But that's just the background and none of that is shown. Instead we focus on 5 kids about whom we learn almost nothing. They like drugs and are on their way to the festival when they crash their car and almost run over some old guy. We've met the old guy earlier. He adopted and supports the cannibal hillbillies.
As a result of the accident they all end up in jail. The driver who has a rich daddy admits the drugs found were his so all the other kids are released. The old guy is a wanted felon on the run and he knows and keeps announcing that his boys will come to free him. The sheriff in charge is some wanna-be tough chick. Her deputies are getting killed in the meantime by the hillbillies, although we never find out the fate of one of them.
And indeed the hillbillies cut all the power, of course, so most of the movie is at night and in the dark; and start killing their way to the jail, although the town is pretty much a ghost town now with everybody and their mother at the festival. From there everything goes by the numbers.
Wrong Turn 5 was filmed in Eastern Europe but little effort was made to make it look like the US. Most of the movie takes place in some cardboard town intersection. The kids aren't particularly interesting or likable. All we know is that the big guy is so in love with his successful college graduating girlfriend and so desperate to keep her from leaving him that he proposes to her. We learn nothing new about the hillbillies either. And this time around they don't look particularly scary. The make up makes them look more neanderthalish than monstrous. One of them even looks and acts somewhat feminine. The death scenes are pretty good though and so are the special effects. There's also some nudity and sex scenes, but there's a frustrating shower scene with the prettiest girl that never materializes. Why? What keeps this movie from being a letdown though is Doug Bradley. It's so good to see him again. He gives spectacular performance. But again, we learn little about his character. What is he all about, what about his past? The subtitle "Bloodline" doesn't refer to anything really, other than Bradley and Hellraiser IV. Nothing is made of the mythology surrounding the town either. The cover of the DVD is deceptive, none of the two images correspond to anything that takes place in the movie. Finally, there is no sense of dread in this movie whatsoever. If I had any say in the development of part 6, I'd focus the story on the Bradley character, bring another writer on board and keep the good things that this franchise has: nudity, violence, gore.
Wrong Turn 5 is a step in the wrong direction with an low budget and almost no attempt at telling a story. Some small town in Kentucky had its entire population disappear centuries ago. Now, kids celebrate a festival there every year that's a mixture of concert, wild free spirit and Halloween. But that's just the background and none of that is shown. Instead we focus on 5 kids about whom we learn almost nothing. They like drugs and are on their way to the festival when they crash their car and almost run over some old guy. We've met the old guy earlier. He adopted and supports the cannibal hillbillies.
As a result of the accident they all end up in jail. The driver who has a rich daddy admits the drugs found were his so all the other kids are released. The old guy is a wanted felon on the run and he knows and keeps announcing that his boys will come to free him. The sheriff in charge is some wanna-be tough chick. Her deputies are getting killed in the meantime by the hillbillies, although we never find out the fate of one of them.
And indeed the hillbillies cut all the power, of course, so most of the movie is at night and in the dark; and start killing their way to the jail, although the town is pretty much a ghost town now with everybody and their mother at the festival. From there everything goes by the numbers.
Wrong Turn 5 was filmed in Eastern Europe but little effort was made to make it look like the US. Most of the movie takes place in some cardboard town intersection. The kids aren't particularly interesting or likable. All we know is that the big guy is so in love with his successful college graduating girlfriend and so desperate to keep her from leaving him that he proposes to her. We learn nothing new about the hillbillies either. And this time around they don't look particularly scary. The make up makes them look more neanderthalish than monstrous. One of them even looks and acts somewhat feminine. The death scenes are pretty good though and so are the special effects. There's also some nudity and sex scenes, but there's a frustrating shower scene with the prettiest girl that never materializes. Why? What keeps this movie from being a letdown though is Doug Bradley. It's so good to see him again. He gives spectacular performance. But again, we learn little about his character. What is he all about, what about his past? The subtitle "Bloodline" doesn't refer to anything really, other than Bradley and Hellraiser IV. Nothing is made of the mythology surrounding the town either. The cover of the DVD is deceptive, none of the two images correspond to anything that takes place in the movie. Finally, there is no sense of dread in this movie whatsoever. If I had any say in the development of part 6, I'd focus the story on the Bradley character, bring another writer on board and keep the good things that this franchise has: nudity, violence, gore.