Though 28 Days Later, replete with a grim semi-intellectual weltanschauung straight from an 8th-grade required reading of Lord of the Flies, proved better suited to drawing critical notice, to these eyes the horror genre’s sole audible sign of life in 2003 was Wrong Turn. This little loved, little budgeted piece of multiplex-filler, fueled by the star wattage of low-rent men’s magazine covergirl Eliza Dushku, tells the immortal tale of six weekend-tripping twenty-somethings (in “the Greenbriar back-country of West Virginia,” a.k.a. Canada) who are systematically hunted down and vivisected by the film’s resident abominations, a panting trio of inbred, retarded peckerwood cannibals.

Strange, terrible things happen when one leaves the traffic jams of the aloof highways for the dirt road less traveled; that’s the lesson to leave Wrong Turn with. It’s xenophobic stuff, and hardly transcendent, but then ideas, much less originality, aren’t the strong point of this slasher. What it does have is a fine central performance by Desmond Harrington as the group’s unflinchingly intent, pressed-and-starched leader; sporting a pert, serious frown and efficient haircut, he’s all concentrated decisiveness, and perfectly attuned to the movie’s mean economy. Quick, nasty, and percussively visceral, Wrong Turn runs like a tuned-up spook house tram; it’s an almost laughably basic distillation of the genre’s primal rhythm of momentum and crude interrupting shocks that neatly remind one of their basic reptilian-brain appeal. Thoroughly shaken up and then driven from the theater by a bellowed Creed-like dirge that accompanied the film’s closing credits, I called the friend who’d recommended Wrong Turn to me, looking for some post-film discussion. Why’d he like it so much?

“I guess I’ve got pretty low standards lately.”

“Yeah, but that’s not it. I mean, Wrong Turn would be just as good if it came out in 1973 or 1983...”

“Yeah,” he consented, “It’s timeless.”

—NICK PINKERTON