Dead End

By adding the Japanese cult movie Battle Royale to Wrong Turn's cinematic puree of Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn 2 primes itself for some clever spins on the repetitive inbred-mutant-humans-hunt-and-eat-sexy-young-people genre. A pseudo-post-apocalypse Survivor-type game show brings five sexy young people (a bitchy vegan, a loudmouth skateboarder, a lesbian marine, a straight-laced jock, and a slutty...uh...apparently, she's just a slut) to the Appalachian woods, where inbred mutant humans start picking them and the TV crew off. Also along for the ride is the tough-as-nails host (Henry Rollins, Bad Boys II), who goes native and starts hunting the inbred mutant humans. Regrettably, the game plotline is soon tossed aside and the movie settles into a straightforward hunt-kill-eat scenario. But for fans of the genre, Wrong Turn 2 does a good job: The sequence of deaths is not entirely predictable and you get to see one pair of exposed breasts, two sets of exposed intestines, and literal barrels of gore. Featuring horror flick stars Erica Leerhsen (the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Crystal Lowe (Black Christmas), Texas Battle (Final Destination 3), Daniella Alonso (The Hills Have Eyes II), D-list celebrity hostess Kimberly Caldwell, and Aleksa Palladino (who once had a promising career in decent indie movies like Manny & Lo, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, and Storytelling). --Bret Fetzer