Review: Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort

Danny (Anthony Ilott) has inherited something from a strain of his family he never knew existed, and he and his buddies head for Hobb Springs, an old folk’s home (but supposedly a resort. It’s not. It’s just not!) in uber-rural West Virginia run by distant relatives (played by Chris Jarvis and Sadie Katz). Posing as a couple, Jarvis and Katz are actually brother and sister, and are very, very, very close. They have plans for Danny (recovering from a bad experience on Wall Street), plans that are gradually revealed. Meanwhile, Danny’s friends do what all stupid youngsters in modern horror films do, whilst the Appalachian inbred cannibals from the previous “Wrong Turn” films lurk about, itching for a kill.

 

A half-step back in the right direction after the very ordinary parts 3, 4, and 5, this is probably the best of the “Wrong Turn” films since the underrated original. We get a new director for this 2015 entry in Valeri Milev (“Re-Kill” with the stupidly underrated Scott Adkins), which is jolly good because by the time Declan O’Brien tackled “Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines” (after having already made parts 3 and 4) all he could give us was a “Rio Bravo” plot, a disappointingly vanilla Doug Bradley failing at being Sir Anthony Hopkins, and some sex and gore. I’m not saying Milev reinvents the wheel here, far from it, he pretty much gives us a film much closer to the original than any of the schlockier sequels. Those films were content to merely throw the hillbilly cannibals (by now given shitty masks and overly campy behaviour) into a unique setting to do the same shit all over again, but without any of the menace (or simplistic effectiveness) of the original. The only signs of cheap schlock we get this time around are the regrettably cheapo-looking masks for the inbred hillbillies, and a stunning, fully naked woman in the opening scene with a seemingly natural body. That last one’s perfectly fine with me, and thankfully the mutant hillbillies aren’t in the film as much as previous films.

 

The central idea behind this one whilst also not terribly new, is certainly more interesting than the scenarios in any of the sequels. It feels more like a direct sequel to the first film than any of the previous films, in terms of tone and backstory. This one earns points for being a nasty fucker and surprisingly nihilistic for a modern horror film. A couple shagging in the least romantic spot of all-time gets one of the better death scenes of late, mostly due to some particularly nasty sound FX. Sheeeeeiiit! The perversion of the villains is watchable in a fucked up, “Flowers in the Attic” goes “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” kinda way. I mean, it’s only 8 minutes in before we get to the incest. Yep. So points there to Milev and screenwriter Frank H. Woodward (the not very good SyFy channel flick “Black Forest”) for getting good and fucked up real quick, as let’s face it, if the freshness is gone, you may as well just get really fucked up and nasty, right? There’s some lovely woodland scenery too, which is always appreciated.

 

On the downside of things, some of the performances are really, really ugly, though lead actor Anthony Ilott is OK in his feature film debut. You can tell that there’s several English actors hampered by their attempt (and failure) at maintaining an American accent, and Ilott is the best of the lot in that regard. I’m also not sure what the title is about, considering it’s not set in a resort. At all. It’s clearly set in an old folk’s home! So that was weird.

 

The best of the “Wrong Turn” sequels, but although none of the films have been terrible, I still don’t think it’s much of a distinction, really. There’s some interesting ideas, a whole lotta incestuous weirdness going on, and a real mean streak to it that makes it stand out a bit, but it’s still not quite there. I’d stick with the original, but this one’s at least smart enough to know that it’s the 6^th film in a series. It gets to the sicko heart of the matter pretty quickly, but in a less schlocky, more disturbing manner than the other sequels. 

 

Rating: C+