Wrong Turn 5

If at first you don't succeed, try 4 more times! That was apparently the philosophy behind Wrong Turn 5, yet another entry in a franchise that is in dire need of a mercy killing. The only audience for this stuff at this point must be some poor, unlucky doofus who blogs while watching awful slasher mov--uh, I mean, whoever has to watch these every week must be the luckiest bastard on the planet! SPOILERS ahead...

A helpful subtitle informs us that the town the mutant hillbillies live near is called Fairlake, and that it was established in 1814, only for the entire population of the town to suddenly vanish 3 years later. Wow, that was a quick movie! 5 killer trees out of 5!!!

Oh no, hold on, there's more. I'm automatically docking this film 1 point for dashing my hopes this early on. And for ripping off the legend of Roanoake for a stupid B-movie. Plus, it just bugs me that---whoa, hey now! Now it's a cheap porn flick! Perhaps I was too quick to remove that point...Aw-bow-chicka-bow-wowwww...

So, uh...hold on...having trouble concentrating on writing. Yeah, so this couple in a tent are making the beast with 2 backs, and someone is walking in the direction of the tent. 3 someones. And all are armed. They burst into the tent, these 3 disfigured stalkers, and Billy, the guy who was making love outta nothin' at all 3 seconds ago, punches the closest stalker in the jaw.

Turns out it was just Billy's friends, messing with the couple. Except for Billy, we don't learn any of their names yet, not even his girlfriend. We do learn that they are in the mountains of West Virginia to attend a music festival called Mountain Man. I guess Burning Man didn't want this movie's stank to spread. A female reporter provides exposition about the Mountain Man Festival, then wanders off as soon as she finishes her report.

Back at the camp, we hear Billy talk about breakfast, which is earth-shattering, then we see a female jogger racing through the woods. The reporter? Someone new? Do I care? Oh, and she's dressed like The Bride from Kill Bill. Mutant cannibals surround her, and she assumes that they're just festival attendees in costumes. She confronts 3 Finger(yup, once again, he's front and center...), and gives him the finger. He chops it off, and decides to keep it.

Screaming, The Un-Bride runs away, and now finds herself facing Pinhead from the Hellraiser films, Doug Bradley in the flesh! What, did he lose a bet? Anyway, he offers to help her when she tells him about her attackers. Yeah. Pull the other leg, Pinhead. Nevertheless, she chooses to believe that he just happened to be waiting for a damsel to rescue.

They scamper a few feet away, and hide behind a shallow incline of bushes, where they watch the mutant cannibals pass right in front of them. After they leave, the old man wraps her hand up, and climbs out of the shallow ditch to act as a lookout. He gets her to follow him, then swings an ax, exposing her intestines to good ol' fresh air. Then, in the best bit so far, he chops of her hand. It lands on the ground, and the fingers make up the "5" in the opening title sequence. This might not be as bad as I thought!

The old man's sons show up, and he orders them to give him "a hand". Heh. One of them even picks up her hand and offers it to him. The older man just walks away, letting the mutants take care of the corpse.

More campsite. We learn that the blond female of the group is named Cruz, and that's it so far for names. A stoner with a guitar regurgitates the nonsense about the mass disappearance of Fairlake's population, except that he claims that a band of cannibal hillbillies slaughtered and ate them all, because of some land dispute. Whatever...just start telling us your freakin' names!

The hillbillies are back at their shack, preparing the jogger for their next meal. Dad walks in, and angrily shows them her wallet and personal belongings, then lectures them about not leaving anything behind that could be traced by investigators. Uh, then they shouldn't have killed a local girl in the first place, right? Logic is this movie's Kryptonite.

Oh, and another thing: Dad refers to them escaping from the hospital in the previous film, and mentions being their father, but then says that he "found them" and took them in. Which is it? And how does Doug Bradley eventually become the old man from the original, who had hair and looked and sounded nothing like him? This is another movie that makes your brain hurt if you think about any of it.

Then we meet Deputy Biggs and his boss, a cute-ish sheriff by the name of Angela. Biggs is going on a trip soon with the sheriff's husband, who just so happens to call as they talk about him. He offers to bring her dinner, since she has to work late. Riveting stuff.

Our campers are now driving to Fairlake to explore, and we finally learn that Cruz is dating Billy. Yay, another character gets a name! As they all chatter about the usual movie nonsense, a figure appears in the middle of the road. They swerve to avoid the person, and slam the car into a tree, destroying the front end.

The 3 guys in the group leave to check on the person they nearly hit, who is now sprawled on the road. They didn't hit him, so why he's down is a mystery. One of them moves in for a closer look, and it's Cannibal Dad, who was playing possum until they got close enough to stab. After one of them is cut on the arm. they start kicking the old man. From the forest, the mutants prepare to kills the guys with arrows.

Fortunately, the sheriff arrives, so the execution is delayed. She gets all 3 of the young men in cuffs with the assistance of Biggs, then also arrests the old man. Then Biggs finds drugs in the crashed car, and Angela calls for another vehicle to assist with the arrest and gathering of evidence. Oh, and she leaves deputy Biggs alone with the vehicle, until they can send someone to tow it in. Well, he's a goner!

Almost immediately after he's left by himself, 3 Finger shoots 2 arrows into the deputy. Then the trio spring from their hiding place, slice off Biggs' ears, and one of them eats one of the ears in front of him. They finally silence his screams by plunging a knife through the top of his head. If their father had been around, he probably would have said something corny, like, "Ears to you!"

At the jail, a local doctor patches up the guy who was stabbed, and advises him to have the injury checked in about 3 weeks. He gets a name: Rick. Yup, the guy who does 1 scene gets a name faster than any other character thus far. Gimme a break!

Cruz panics over the arrest, worrying that it will affect her scholarship. Another female, wearing a sleeveless shirt is named Lita. Progress! Billy decides to be noble, and tells Angela that all of the drugs belonged solely to him. She appears skeptical, but agrees to release the other teens, so long as they don't try to leave the area. Papa hillbilly demands to be set free as well, and Angela reminds him that he cut Billy's arm with a weapon.

Billy watches his friends leave, then settles in for his new life as a drug kingpin. As his buddies all check in at the local motel, Angela runs a fingerprint check on Papa, and quickly discovers that he has a criminal history going back about 30 years. She makes a phone call, and arranges to have a U.S. Marshal pick him up in the morning. Oh, and now even HE has a name: Maynard Odets. At the same time, the teens call about their car, and discover that they'll have to wait until morning to see it.

In town, the dead reporter's film crew worry because she hasn't returned yet. The impatient cameraman tells the young female production assistant that she'll have to do the live festival report herself. He gives her a mike and starts filming before she can argue the matter any further. As the nervous young lady stammers through the intro, 3 Finger walks right past her, staring in awe at all of the random teens dressed like inbred hillbillies.

Maynard's boys use their truck to take down the town's phone lines. From his cell, Maynard just laughs at the sheriff's confusion. Meanwhile, the stoner guy is now named Julian. He arranges for Billy's father to come get them, because he's apparently some influential lawyer. Then, after getting off of the phone, Julian callously suggests that they all still go to the festival. What a giant douche.

The hillbillies then break into the local power plant, and start sabotaging the panels that keep  the juice flowing. The night shift employee manning everything sees them on his monitors, and assumes that the trio are just kids in costumes. He goes after them, then tries to back-pedal when he sees their weapons. They swiftly capture him, then hoist him up on ropes to be fried by electrical cables.

As the town goes dark, Maynard laughs again and promises that they will all die by morning. A drunk who was unconscious when Maynard was brought in, requests another cell. Then there's a silly little scene where a girl asks a deputy to help her get into the festival, because she made a "wrong turn". Isn't that clever AND hilarious?

Angela tries to contact Biggs, which she'd need a Ouija board for by now. She tries to hail the other deputies at the festival, and we see that one is busy screwing the girl he met earlier. Cruz leaves the motel, to bring Billy some food. Once outside, she senses the cannibals lurking around her, and quickens her pace.

Julian then decides to leave the motel too, and also visit Billy. As he makes his exit, we see Cruz run into 3 Finger, who stabs her in the abdomen. In a scene lifted right out of a Freddy Krueger film, 3 Finger grabs up the poor girl's entrails, and starts feeding them to her. Nasty when Freddy first did it, nasty today.

Julian arrives safely at the jail, and wonders aloud how he got there ahead of Cruz. Angela wants him to leave, but she agrees that the disappearance of Cruz is troubling. She allows him to remain only until Cruz arrives, at which point both can go back to the motel together. Then Julian quickly fills Billy in on the call to his father.

At the motel, Lita and Gus(Seriously? Our last couple to get names are Lita and Gus???) try out a new sexual position, apparently called Nose-to-Chin. Weirdos. They have a boring chat over whether or not to live together, then Gus proposes to Lita. She rejects him, then heads to the bathroom to take a shower.

Gus stays in bed, then hears a knock at the door. It's one of the cannibals, whom Gus mistakes for someone in a festival costume. He shuts the door, but there's another knock. This time, the trio of killers attack in unison, cut his throat, and drag him outside. After a very brief confrontation between Maynard and Billy, we see Lita trying to hide from the mutants. They nab her anyway. Then Angela's husband, Jason, arrives with the dinner he promised her. There's another man with him, but I didn't catch his name. Big surprise, right?

Gus is still alive, but probably not for long. His feet are tied to a tree stump, and his arms are connected to the chain in the truck. Before he passes out, Gus watches as the killers mangle and smash his feet and legs with sledgehammers. Then they drive him to town, and dump him in front of the jail, where they run him over.

Angela deputizes everyone at the jail, except for Maynard. She then breaks into a nearby hardware store, and steals a gas-powered generator and some gasoline. Back at the jail, they hear a gunshot, and Mike wants to leave. Julian calms him down, and they agree to wait 10 more minutes for the sheriff to return.

Angela, meanwhile, gets a radio working, and contacts a doofus all the was up here, in New Hampshire. She convinces him to get a message to the authorities, until he realizes that her signal is located at the Mountain Man Festival. Assuming that she's pulling his leg, Teddy the stoner assumes that the call is fake. Then another gun goes off, and Teddy suddenly isn't sure. When Angela abandons the radio to see where the shot came from, the generator shuts off, and the radio goes dead.

Mose, the other nameless guy who seemed to be with her husband Jason, fired a shot at Lita, but no one was hurt. Maynard then offers safe passage to the rest if they kill the sheriff for him. No one takes him up on the offer. Billy and Julian then arm themselves, and decide to go looking for Cruz. They find her mangled body several blocks away, then hear 3 Finger cackling near their location. They get ambushed, then knocked out.

When they wake up, they find themselves up Shit Creek. Billy is buried in the ground up to his neck, and Julian is tethered to the ground by a chain around his ankle. 3 Finger then starts up a snow blower, and aims it at Billy's head. He misses the frirst time, but then grinds the head to mush on his second attempt. After that, he quickly shreds Julian apart, sending blood and flesh flying in every direction.

Angela and Mose leave the jail, so that Mose can safely reach the sheriff's truck, and ride to the next town to get help. As he drives away, Mose hits a trap laid out by the cannibals, and gets himself captured. He wakes up as the killers are stuffing him into a metal barrel. They seal it up, then plan to set the room on fire, roasting Mose alive.

Lita is approached by Maynard, who suggests that he'd let her escape if she opened his cell. Then they all hear Mose screaming as he burns, and Angela tries to rescue him. The building explodes, and Angela is knocked off her feet by the blast.

Lita lets Maynard out of his cell during the confusion, and he repays her by stabbing her eyes with a letter opener. Angela bandages her eyes up, and shoots Maynard to slow him down. She has a chance to finish him off, but backs down. She leaves the jail yet again.

This time out, she finds her husband bound and gagged in his car. She opens the door, which triggers a booby trap, and she sees her husband get dissected right before her eyes. She gets captured as Maynard horrifies Lita with stories of torture.

Angela is tied to one of the jail cell walls. Maynard attaches a shotgun to her feet, that will be triggered if she  merely steps down. The barrel is duct-taped to her chin and mouth. Maynard and his boys set the jail on fire, and Maynard tells Angela that how she dies is up to her: She can burn to death, or get shot to death. As Maynard climbs into the truck with his brood, he hears a gunshot and he smiles.

Lita is left wandering down the road, staggering and blind, when a vehicle pulls up. She thinks that she's been rescued, but 3 Finger leads her to the truck. THE END

Man, that was bleak! The effects were better than they were in the last couple, so that was an improvement. But how about we stop with the prequels? And add more than just the same 2-3 cannibals into the mix. And give 3 Finger a rest for a movie or 2. I'll be generous here, and give this movie 4 killer trees out of 5...I just want something new next time, that's all.

And what did I learn from watching Wrong Turn 5?

-You can set a movie at a music festival, and never show even a nanosecond of the actual festival.

-You can make a 5-movie franchise with cheap rubber masks, and lots of plaid.

-Death by fire or shotgun isn't much of a choice at all. I choose death by snu-snu!!!!


No idea what my next movie will be, as Netflix is currently giving me a hard time over a billing issue. We'll see what happens. If worse comes to worse, the movie will have to wait an extra week. Hope to see you soon!