Horror meets Deliverance in Wrong Turn, a movie that stars Desmond Harrington and sexy Eliza Dushku but that really stars a couple of psychotic, cannibalistic, deranged and inbred Appalachian hillbillies. Its mindless entertainment, but with some good gore and truly hideous villains, Wrong Turn deserves its place on the video shelf.

Harrington stars as Chris, a young doctor on his way to an interview in West Virginia. Already late and stuck at the site of a car crash, he decides to take a shortcut through the back hills, only to collide with another car. There he meets Jessie, an attractive young woman that just broke up with her boyfriend. The names of the other four people are not important, however, as they are inevitably going to meet a most gruesome fate... Because hunting them are three psychotic, cannibalistic, deranged and inbred Appalachian hillbillies.

Let's be honest - people don't watch horror movies for intelligence or a complicated story, and so horror movies have a completely different brand of requirements. They are: sex, nudity, gore and scares. Of course, most horror movies nowadays are not very scary, just because the people watching them have seen so many (like me). Nudity and sex are less and less common, unfortunately. So that leaves gore...

Wrong Turn isn't as gory as the terrible Freddy vs. Jason, or as last week's Kill Bill, but it is gory enough. One girl gets killed when barbed wire cuts through her mouth and cheeks and into her throat. Another gets an axe through her mouth. A few people get dismembered. Wrong Turn is thankfully one of the more gory movies to come out recently.

Furthermore, while it really isn't that scary (actually, a fair amount of the movie takes place during the day), it is a little creepy; that is, the psychotic, cannibalistic, deranged and inbred Appalachian hillbillies are really quite nasty and menacing.

If you're still reading, than Wrong Turn may be for you. I personally like psychotic, cannibalistic, deranged and inbred Appalachian hillbillies. To help matters, Wrong Turn is short and fast-paced, and also has some pretty good acting. After all, Dushku has a reputable television and film career ("Buffy" and Bring it On), and Harrington is currently a lead on ABC's "L.A. Dragnet."

Like most movies like this, however, there are some flaws here and there. Most of them happen in a single night sequence, where the survivors climb up into an abandoned watchtower . After the tower is lit on fire, the survivors jump into the trees to escape; however, as soon as all of them have landed on the branches, the burning tower seemingly disappears.

Wrong Turn doesn't have anything special to offer, but it is a harmless piece of entertainment that will make a good rental come Halloween. After all, it features a good amount of gore and a bunch of psychotic, cannibalistic... well, you know.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.