PF
Pietro Ferraro
•In a remote area, near an old abandoned paper mill, a new reality show is being filmed: Apocalypse. The participants will have to simulate a survival course in a post-nuclear setting. Unaware of the presence of a family of monstrous cannibals, they will be attacked and become the main course of a long and bloody Sunday lunch.
There are films that are born to be distributed exclusively for the home video market. These products, called in jargon "straight-to-video", included, in the early 1980s, everything that major distribution rejected. At first, they were more porn titles or Z-grade horror movies.
The catalogs in question were full of homemade movies packed with low-quality special effects, where violence and sex were the glue of approximate stories and hastily written dialogues.
These videotapes were sold at American gas stations almost under the counter; no cinema would screen what many considered just trash.
But without that so-called trash, films like "Evil Dead" by Sam Raimi and the slasher films that would inspire the various "Don't Open That Door" and the more recent "Grindhouse" would not have had the right visibility.
"Wrong Turn 2" is part of this genre of films conceived for the video rental circuit, movies shot with the low-budget concept focusing on special effects rather than acting.
The first "Wrong Turn" had the merit of using the clichés of the genre and benefited from the excellent makeup work of expert Stan Winston, who gave us memorable creatures like the alien queen of the cult fanta-horror "Aliens: Scontro Finale" by James Cameron.
Winston enriched the film by creating and characterizing the members of the cannibal family, and the director opted for a photography that well paid homage to the classics of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper.
Unfortunately, young director Joe Lynch, in his debut, chose a hyper-realistic photography, like a music video, not visually separating the purely reality moments, shot in digital, from the events external to the show.
This greatly affects the atmosphere, which in classics like "The Hills Have Eyes" and the infamous "Don't Open That Door" conveyed that sick and disturbing atmosphere that is lost here. The makeup is damaged as a result, so much so that the deformed members of the family have lost those characteristics that in the first film made them real characters.
In this new family, which has become more numerous, we have an approximate makeup and a too loud staging, everything is in broad daylight, nothing is left to the imagination of the viewer; but without a doubt the succession of ultra-gore effects that we are served does not go unnoticed.
There are certainly situations that leave a mark from the very first beats, with the actress of the moment cut in half by an axe, through the family meal with prayer, up to the deformed newborn who is quenched with contaminated water.
Yes, contaminated, because in this second chapter a motivation is sought for the deformities of the cannibals, and it is found in the contaminating effluents that the paper mill has been discharging into the water table of the forest for years.
The purely acting part does not leave traces, the cast is homogeneous and performs with professionalism the work assigned to them; notable are Erica Leerhsen (Nina Papas) and the brutal marine Dale Murphy played by the good and self-ironic Henry Rollins.
The exteriors were shot near Vancouver in a location decidedly too bucolic and not up to the one in the first film.
In conclusion, we are faced with a sequel inferior to the first chapter with some high-impact sequences that will surely satisfy the strong stomachs, and being an Unrated version nothing will be spared.
If you then want to delve into the themes on these delicious alternative families, we recommend the episode "home" of the fourth season of the TV series "X-files", an episode/tribute that will not fail to surprise you.
