Not that 2003’s Wrong Turn is any sort of classic, but any degree of effectiveness in conjuring cases of the heebie-jeebies has been dulled by the mild hit film’s five sequels. All made for the direct-to-DVD market, those increasingly silly — but comfort-food satisfying — installments made the predators the stars instead of the prey. Now, original screenwriter Alan B. McElroy (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers) returns to press the reset button. Hard.

The result, also titled Wrong Turn, follows Jen (Charlotte Vega, American Assassin) and five of her millennial friends — “goddamn hipster freaks” to the locals — as they arrive in Virginia to hike the Appalachian Trail. Even if there weren’t a six-weeks-later prologue of Jen’s father (Matthew Modine, 47 Meters Down) attempting to locate his missing daughter, we know not all these beautiful young people will make it to the final frame. In fact, we count on it!

Rather cleverly, McElroy and director Mike P. Nelson (The Domestics) use your knowledge of the original and/or its sequels against you — or at least for the benefit of their reboot. What you expect to be a slasher instead becomes something of a folk horror tale. Still, the filmmakers are not above smashing someone with a runaway log. An ominous warning of “Nature eats everything it catches” resonates as Wrong Turn ’21’s theme, sacrificing characters to other booby traps in the forest.

The surprise is how solid the movie is — for the first half. Its initial scenes of Jen and her pals exploring a quiet town of deer hunters and Confederate flags are more frightening than anything happening along the trail, in part because rural folks not taking kindly to tourists from the city isn’t just some trope. Modine’s quest finds deep roots in realism as well. From there, McElroy and Nelson’s pivot toward the road not taken is an admirable one, yet not as gratifying as their movie’s steps to get there. As well-made as this seventh installment is, I never thought I’d end up missing dear ol’ Saw-Tooth, One-Eye and Three-Finger, but I do. —Rod Lott

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If I were a betting man, I’d place all my chips on the theory that Renaud Gauthier’s Aquaslash came into existence because of one scene. Admittedly (not to mention literally), it’s a killer: the one where most unfortunate watersliding teens meet a big, bladed “X” on their trip down the tube, and the bratty popular girl at the front immediately gets quartered into nice, neat (but bloody) pieces shaped like pie slices, as if the gods were playing Trivial Pursuit with dismembered humans.

Placed there on purpose by a gloved person unknown, the blades are inserted many, many minutes before Aquaslash gets around to paying them off. Gauthier even periodically cuts (no pun intended) to show them in wait amid rushing chlorinated water in an otherwise empty flume; no shot has been teased so mercilessly in cinema since Catherine Tramell’s Great Leg Uncrossing of 1992.

When the carnage arrives, it’s easily the movie’s highlight — but almost by default, because Gauthier (Discopath) has no other comparable bit to offer. Everything in this waterpark-set story appears to have been written around that novel death — and forced if necessary, as if Piranha 3DD already claimed every other possible waterslide gag. (Come to think of it, yeah, it did.)

Of course, originality is not on Aquaslash’s to-do list. Being an exercise in 1980s nostalgia, the movie takes place at Wet Valley Water Park, where the class of 2018 continue its high school’s decades-old tradition of a weekend-long party at the site, seedy motel rooms included. Several characters are introduced at once with little delineation beyond who hates whom, who gets high with whom, who’s fucking whom and who’s playing in the cover band (TRIGGER WARNING: Corey Hart). Key affiliations among them aren’t made clear until well into the last 20 of its rather expeditious 71 minutes, but really, when everyone is this unlikable and you know they’re mere pawns awaiting execution, does it matter?

French-Canadian to the point of seeming alien, Aquaslash attempts some comedy, only one line of which truly succeeds: “You’re built like a Swiffer.” —Rod Lott

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Discomforting and moody, the Canadian indie Death Trip feels like — and very well may be — a homemade movie from a group of friends. Admirably, it operates as if unconcerned with commerce, and more about just looking for a good excuse to splatter a little blood, get outside in the cold and run around the woods with a croquet mallet for non-croquet use. In no way is that meant as a negative; after all, first-time director James Watts demonstrates a firm grasp of the machinations of modern horror by opening with one of the more startling scares of recent memory.

Three young ladies (Tatyana Olal, Melina Trimarchi and Kelly Kay) road-trip with their male pal (Garrett Johnson) to his family’s cottage for the weekend. (All four are unprofessional actors and go by their real first names, which takes some pressure off the improvisation.) They eat, drink, toke, poke (or at least play Fuck, Marry, Kill) and peek on the undressing young woman next door (Zoe Slobodzian, who co-produced and handled wardrobe), whose father is rumored to have murdered her mom.

Just as Death Trip finishes setting up its board, Watts and co-scripter Kay (whose previous writing credits number several hardcore pornos) cease moving the pieces in order to overindulge on its worst mumblecore tendencies. Serving as the movie’s second act, an elongated party sequence is insufferable padding around the barest of character information, extinguishing the slow burn and revealing the needed for a beefed-up outline. I’m not saying the emperor has no clothes, but they’re definitely draped carelessly over a sofa and forgotten about for far too long.

Comparatively action-packed, the last third is practically an act of atonement, paying off the seeds planted throughout — namely, acts of violence Watts’ purposely disorienting editing heretofore teases. The film’s final face-off takes place atop a frozen lake, while some random dude just zooms around on a snowmobile to add a pinch of tension and one cup of absurdity. This ends on a literal high note, with crunched testicles. O Canada!

Death Trip would work more effectively if its millennial characters — neck tats, Bernie bumper stickers and all — were more likable. Then again, that they aren’t may be part of Watts and Kay’s point, given microcinema’s leaning toward the unorthodox. One thing remains certain: the power of the score. In his first time out as film composer, singer/songwriter Estan Beedell deserves massive credit for adding points to viewers’ blood pressure with a mere pluck of a string and roll of the drums. —Rod Lott

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William Girdler’s Grizzly was such a profit-churner in 1976 that another outing for the killer bear was just a matter of time. But 37 years’ time?

Shot in Hungary in 1983, but held up first by money troubles and then pure indifference, Grizzly II: Revenge finally saw the light of day in 2020 — a gap the film touts as a positive with Selznickian aplomb. It’s only by the grace of God — or Suzanne C. Nagy (who confusingly credits herself as producer and executive producer) — giving director André Szöts’ only feature some finishing touches. Those amount to:
• shooting a musical performance in close-up and against black so she didn’t have to worry about matching backgrounds
• grabbing sound effects from YouTube
• adding visual effects as unconvincing as Birdemic’s
• and padding generously with stock footage from Adobe Stock, iStock, Shutterstock, Getty Images and more, to get this thing over the magic 70-minute mark

Her bananas patchwork is like nothing you’ve seen. Unless, of course, part of your day is hallucinating things like Raiders of the Lost Ark’s John Rhys-Davies in Crazed Davy Crockett mode, ominously growling lines such as “You got the devil bear!”

By an enormous stroke of luck, Grizzly II opens with a troika of pre-A-list celebs in Academy Award winner George Clooney, Academy Award winner Laura Dern and HIV winner Charlie Sheen, playing friends hiking their way to the big rock concert at Yellowstone Park. After setting up camp for the night, Clooney and Dern get frisky, leaving Sheen (who resembles Jason Schwartzman) as the third wheel. No matter, because five minutes in, the future stars are dead, killed by an uncommonly tall bear presumably angry for its poached cubs.

With the grizzly on the loose, out for vengeance and often depicted with a limited-articulation puppet, the park’s most principled ranger (Steve Inwood, Staying Alive) and its “director of bear management” (Deborah Raffin, Death Wish 3) think maybe having tens of thousands of people gathered for an outdoor concert isn’t the greatest idea. Coming from the Mayor Larry Vaughn School of Decision-Making, however, park boss Draygon (Louise Fletcher, Exorcist II: The Heretic) disagrees. The final scene is a riot, in both senses of the word.

If only Draygon listened to reason, many lives would be spared … but we wouldn’t have a movie. Then again, whether we have one now depends on your criteria for calling each scene complete, as Nagy has taken so many shortcuts to deliver her Revenge, the titular carnivorous mammal has no time to shit in the woods. Unfortunately, not enough are taken — shortcuts, not shits — where viewers will wish Grizzly II had: during Yellowstone’s would-be Woodstock. I mean, whatta lineup: Toto Coelo! Set the Tone! The Dayz! Landscape III! Korlátolt Felelősségű Társaság! —Rod Lott

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If Dr. Giggles and Dr. Pimple Popper merged practices, Cyst would be their collab. Short on budget and tall in imagination, this goopy, goofy horror comedy is a two-location wonder like the kind Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment used to make, minus the visual flatness.

In 1961, three patent examiners return a final time to the medical office of Dr. Guy (George Hardy, the dad from Troll 2) after a disastrous first demo of a machine he calls “The Get Gone.” For America’s acne-afflicted, blister-bodied, polyp-peppered and sore-saddled, Guy’s invention could be a godsend, as it promises “painless” skin removal. It lies.

Dr. Guy basically pisses on his own hospitality and Nurse Patty won’t allow it! Tired of his misogynist ways, the incessant bullying and torrents of milky discharge on her face — from patients’ squeezed zits (why, what were you thinking?) — the long-suffering Patty (a strong and stunning Eva Habermann, TV’s Lexx) is working her last day when she becomes the hero of this sebaceous story, seemingly torn from the time-yellowed pages of EC Comics’ Weird Science.

That shift happens after The Get Gone goes wrong and a cyst it slices off the back of the doc’s meek assistant (Darren Ewing, Troll 2’s tree boy) suddenly sprouts spidery legs and a thirst for human blood. From there, Cyst is a mess — on purpose, of course — with fluids shooting and spilling and oozing and killing as Patty takes charge to help her fellow trapped characters try to stay alive while the little malevolent, malignant mass grows to full rubber-monster stage. Not all succeed.

In his third feature as director or writer, the Texas Cotton-pickin’ Tyler Russell gooses Cyst along with a sure hand and a tongue so in-cheek, it gets mail there. The reverential injection of B-level camp is not only on purpose, but obviously encouraged behind the scenes, being produced in part by Greg Sestero (The Room’s Mark and ergo, author of The Disaster Artist). I somehow missed Sestero’s name in the opening credits, because I didn’t recognize him as one of the patent examiners.

There’s zero mistaking Hardy, however. Destined for eternal Troll 2 infamy even after he leaves this mortal coil, the real-life dentist turned accidental actor certainly has limitations in range. While the aw-shucksness that’s made him a horror-convention fan favorite isn’t present in this villainous role, Hardy’s dopey nature and above-amateurish delivery are — and they actually work for the unhinged mad-scientist persona. With Nic Cage-mannerisms aiming to leap over over-the-top, Dr. Guy is as anything-goes intent on securing that patent as a former game-show host to a second stint as POTUS.

But will lowbrow art imitate life, even in a nice, compact 69 minutes? To find out, give Cyst a good poke. —Rod Lott

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