Wrong Turn 5 (2012)
** (out of 4)
A group of college students are on their way to a music festival in West Virginia when they're targeted by Maynard (Doug Bradley) and the three mutant rednecks. Before anyone can be harmed Maynard is thrown in jail where the sheriff (Camilla Arfwedson) plans to turn him over to the U.S. Marshalls in the morning but sure enough the three mutants show up to try and break him out.
WRONG TURN 5 is basically just a remake of RIO BRAVO or ASSAULT ON PRECENT 13, whichever film writer-director Declan O'Brien is a fan of. Either way, this film is certainly a step back from the previous entry but fans of the series should find a few things here to keep them entertained, although there's no question that they scaled by on the gore and violence levels. These two films were filmed pretty close to one another and it's clear that O'Brien wanted to get them as far away of the first two in the series. I really don't blame or fault him for trying to mix things up but this film can't compete with the fourth in the series let alone something like the two films it's borrowing from.
With that said, again, I enjoy the fact that the writer-director tried to do something different with the series but we've seen this type of horror film way too many times and there just aren't enough original moments here to keep it entertaining. Everything in the plot is just something we've seen before and even the death scenes aren't all that memorable especially after what we've already seen. The one saving grace in the movie is the performance of Bradley who is just downright evil. He pretty much has to stay behind the jail cell for the entire film so it's just the lines of dialogue that he has to work with. Bradley does a wonderful job at just being the creepy old man and without him there's no question that the film would drag.
The sheriff character is a well-written one, a strong female role and the actress does a good job with it. The rest of the cast is pretty forgettable and even worse is that the screenplay makes them all some of the dumbest that you're ever going to see in a horror movie. Plus, there are countless logical issues here including the fact that there appears to be no one in this town other than the main characters. Yes, I know there's a music festival going on but surely not everyone is attending it. Even the fact that this small town is having a festival and yet the only motel there still has rooms available to rent to the college students is something of a joke. Yes, that's nit-picking but when a film leaves you bored like WRONG TURN 5 did me, it's easy to see the flaws.
