By Geno McGahee
In 2003, the big screen hillbilly horror flick “WRONG TURN” was released and it did fairly well. It was big enough to spawn straight to video sequel after sequel after sequel, leading me to the 3 dollar Blu-ray selection at Stop-N-Shop where I found WRONG TURN 5: BLOODLINES. Written and directed by Declan O’Brien (WRONG TURN 4: BLOODY BEGINNINGS, JOY RIDE 3, WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD), WRONG TURN 5: BLOODLINES is actually a decent horror movie. Although I believe you have no right to complain if you only spend three dollars on a movie, I was ready to do so. Complaining is more fun than giving a good review, but I am an honest man and this review will be fair.
Much like JOY RIDE 3, we begin with a sex scene. This must be an O’Brien stamp that he leaves on his movies. If there is sex happening in the first two minutes of the film, O’Brien has to be near. We then move onto a group of young adults heading to a big festival to see some music and get wasted. Billy (Simon Ginty), his girlfriend, Cruz (Amy Lennox), Gus (Paul Luebke), his girlfriend Lita (Roxanne McKee) and their guitar-playing, town historian friend, Julian (Oliver Hoare), all are excited for the event but the dark history is looming over it. It was based on a massacre where hillbilly cannibals took out the entire town and cooked them and ate them.
At the festival, many people are dressing like hillbillies and causing trouble. Sheriff Angela (Camilla Arfwedson) is preparing for a busy night of arresting intoxicated troublemakers but things get far worse than imagined. When the group of youngsters encounters Maynard (Doug Bradley), Billy gets stabbed, their car gets destroyed and all involved end up in cells. Angela discovers that Maynard is wanted for murder and is now holding him until they can pick him up in the morning, but “his boys” are ready to break him out.
The overly happy Three Finger (Borislav Iliev), Saw Tooth (George Karlukovski) and One Eye (Radoslav Parvanov), are murderous hillbillies that are led by Maynard. When Maynard is locked up, the trio goes crazy and starts killing people at the festival, including the group that is now stuck in town. They knock down a cell tower and then head over to the electric company. Like most movies, the most expendable characters are security guards and the moment I saw the poor security guard at the electric company, I knew he was not going to make it to the end of the film.
After they kill the guard, they head into town and go on a killing spree, murdering their victims in very creative ways and that is part of the great appeal of this film. As the people of the town end up brutally killed, Sheriff Angela deputizes the group and tries to hold them off as Maynard chuckles in his cell. Any attempt to escape fails and the one chance to contact the outside world ends up poorly. It’s this small group against the killer hillbillies and it doesn’t go well for the group.
WRONG TURN 5: BLOODLINES may not be the best movie of all time but it meets the most important criteria: it entertains. Three Finger is absolutely hilarious and fun to watch as he laughs hysterically and just looks so strange. The acting is solid and Doug Bradley does well in the role of the lead bad guy. He is most known for his run in the HELLRAISER series.
The only thing that I found strange about this film was the mediocre latex prosthetics of the hillbillies. They just looked really fake. The special effects and gore was really good in this. I’m quite surprised that the hillbillies were so lackluster, but, in the end, it’s only a small problem and the movie turned out to be a lot better than anticipated and a great deal of fun. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 6.5/10
