The bad guys in Wrong Turn are a group of in-bred hillbillies, sons of the soil, mountain men--whatever--who while their days away trapping people who are unfortunate enough to wind up in their forest, then killing them and performing unspeakble acts with their bodies. If this was a smart movie, like Deliverance, I'd now launch into a pop analysis of the movie's subtext and what it says about the young adults of America. It's not incorrect to say that Wrong Turn structures its terror around the "civilized" preconceptions of its sub/urban protagonists, who, even when they're being hunted out in the middle of nowhere, still think that it's somebody else's job to save them. It's also not incorrect to say that the movie presents a terribly unflattering view of West Virginia; every character in the movie fits into three categories: deranged in-bred killer, wary local redneck, or just plain somebody who wants to get the hell through the state and go somewhere important. I'm going to swallow my sizeable criticism of that one, because I realize that writer Alan B. McElroy could have picked any state in the south or, for that matter, along the Appalachian trail. Still, I'd be surprised if the studio didn't get an angry letter from the West Virginia Division of Tourism.

But even if Wrong Turn hints at such subtext, that's not really what it's about in terms of execution. Actually, "execution" itself is what the film is about. Even if the audience pretty much knows who's going to survive by the time all the characters are in place, the fun part is seeing how they get it. And the killers in Wrong Turn, with their grotesque faces (based on reality, as we're told in the DVD's documentaries) and collection of razor wire and woodaxes, deliver. Director Rob Schmidt stages several scenes of moderate tension and knows how to finish them with a flourish (the best was one involving a bow-and-arrow). He's also helped by the cast; really, this is one of the best-acted slasher films in recent memory. Decent performances in a slasher movie about hillbillies running amok? Now that's scary.