Part 2 Week: Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

Howdy boys and girls and welcome back to Day 3 of Part 2 Week.  We are sloughing through better that I thought so clearly it is time to drag you all out in the woods to be butchered maliciously, carved into bite sized chunks and shuck and devoured like a plate of oysters.  Oh, don't worry.  We will just have our brains momentarily scooped out for an hour and a half as we trudge through a sequel that frankly I didn't think had enough material to be warranted.  A nice throwback theme to the exploitation days as we wind our way to the wilderness den of damnation.  This is Wrong Turn 2: Dead End.

Manson family photo album.

Nina: What I saw... WAS SPOILER!









Yes back to the hills and dense forest of West Virginia and I have be honest, if I ever travel through this region via vehicle I will be packing a sidearm, long rifle and probably a couple of blades.  Thanks original film!   It has been 4 years since the original was released and we get the general notion that this sequel is to carry on from the last outing with the three hillbilly cannibal hunters but if you recall they were pretty maimed and burnt thanks to Dushku and Harrington.   A reality survival show is underway giving the feel of what how to live in a harsh environment with rudimentary skills and abilities from the land.

Our movie opens with Kimberly (Kimberly Caldwell of Life on a Stick, Twentysixmiles and Franklin & Bash) as a spoiled reality TV star/model that is desperate for the big break cursing out her agent and losing her cell signal.  T-Mobile: guaranteed coverage except a slasher genre film.  No sooner does she almost run a guy over with her SAAB she gets out to investigate only to be slain and made stock of.   Whoops, so the moral is never yell like a horrid bitch to the guy making 15% of your gross.  

So Rollins, done anything beyond that Liar album?

Moving on; our troop consists of Jake (Texas Battle of Final Destination 3, Even Money, Hitting the Bricks and the Bold and the Beautiful), a former high school football player, Amber (Daniella Alonso of  One Tree Hill, The Hills Have Eyes II remake, Friday Night Lights and My Generation) young Marine officer and Iraq vet, plucky Elena (Crystal Lowe of Insomnia, Final Destination 3, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Hot Tub Time Machine and Primeval: New World) the lingerie model and tart of the group, wisecracking skateboard punk Jonesy (Steve Braun of The Trip, The Skulls III, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Killzone 3), goth girl Nina (Erica Leerhsen of Anything Else, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, Little Athens, Lonely Joe and The Butterfly Room) and seeing no one has seen neither hide nor hair of Kimberly the show's producer Mara (Aleksa Palladino of Red Dirt, The Ring Two, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Boardwalk Empire) steps in as one of the troopers.  Lead by former Marine Colonel Dale Murphy (Henry Rollins of The Chase, Heat, Johnny Mnemonic, Batman Beyond, Bad Boys II, Feast, and Sons of Anarchy) he feels like he is kicking water up hill but by God he signed the damn contract so time to get down and dirty.

Yes the cliches are all out to play as Murphy finds Three Finger from the first flick trying to blast him with a shotgun and Murphy tags him but good.   Leaving the kids to stay grouped together Murphy hikes around to find any modicum of civilization as he finds the old guy at the gas pump/bait shop/outhouse/entire world he has lived in.  They babble a bit and the old man is very insightful on the hillbilly cannibals as apparently they are products of incest and some biochemical process that the local paper mill botched and dumped... only to reveal he is the father of all this mongoloids and attacks Murphy only to lose to him and get blown up by dynamite.

Okay the pet peeves of this flick are as thus:  More graphic death scenes, cannibalism, incest themes, torture, anguish and buckets of blood do NOT make for a story.  You have some elements in there but they were cast so higgley piggly that no one person could truly get the scope of the flick.  Showing me a girl that bought her implants also not making up for the lack of a coherent story arc.  Sorry fellas but I need my brain stimulated too.   This has no real value aside from new characters being picked off, the reappearance of Three Finger and dragging a simple horror film into a franchise to bilk money and make a mess.

Coupled with the continuity errors and gore gags that did not go off.  A girl gets halved length wise and only the intestines fall out?  Um there would have been some serious blood spurts there gore fans.   Crew members pulling the body apart are seen the the reflection of the red car holding said dummy.  My personal favorite error was mentioning that Amber would have attended West Point for Officer's school.  Now most of us civvies would not know that West Point is for Army officers and not Marines and she would in fact attend the US Navy Academy but I just started out laughing like a nut.  While SFX guru Stan Winston is no longer among us I have to say his crew was fairly top notch in prostethics, make-up and weapons rigs.   Just need to recheck bladders and hide your cable pull crew better fellas.

Eww, dead guy!