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WRONG TURN

Rednecks everywhere must unite, form a special-interest group, and send a message to Hollywood. Seriously, when was the last time you could recall a favorable movie representation of a mountain man — perhaps Next of Kin? Other than that, folks from the backwoods have appeared simply as inbred sodomites who can’t tell an oval from a square, and it’s no different here. You could call this one Deliverance without a banjo or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Goes East. Six unsuspecting yuppies (nubile twentysomethings with chiseled jaw lines and perky breasts) wind up on a back road in West Virginia where several missing persons were last seen. Lurking in the woods is a clan of unwashed, disfigured hillbillies who can’t speak English, wallow in their own feces, and take sport in hunting passing strangers — the contents of their refrigerator would delight Jeffrey Dahmer. You know how this one goes. Rob Schmidt’s direction does manage some gripping moments, and the two stars, Desmond Harrington and Eliza Dushku, look fetching as they fall from the frying pan and into a quagmire.

BY TOM MEEK

Issue Date: June 6 - 12, 2003
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