14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad, not bad at all, July 2, 2005
This review is from: Detour (DVD)
Before digging into the nuts and bolts that make up "Detour," let's briefly summarize a couple of movies. Wes Craven's low budget masterpiece shocker "The Hills Have Eyes," released to universal outrage in 1977, examined the tragic series of incidents that befell a family after their mobile home broke down in the desert. A gaggle of inbred cannibals (of course) moved in for the kill, and the movie quickly descended into a struggle between civilization and barbarism as the surviving members of each clan battled it out for supremacy. O.K. Now, in 1974 a struggling filmmaker named Tobe Hooper released a rather bloodless little film called "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," a movie about a group of kids stranded out in the middle of nowhere facing down a family of lunatic cannibals (Hmmm, a pattern). The movie quickly descended into a battle between civilization and barbarism as one of the kids battled against an evil beyond reckoning. Why am I summarizing these two unrelated movies in a review for a flick made in 2002? Because "Detour" borrows heavily from both of these efforts. Before you start groaning, however, let me say that this movie manages to do something most imitators don't do--it entertains despite its derivative qualities.
The movie opens with a five-minute sequence showing two young ladies (one of them the adorable Tiffany Shepis clad in a skintight outfit and big boots--worth the price of admission alone) dying horribly at the hands of some lunatic sporting a hook-like device attached to his arm. Then the film moves into a series of quick cuts showing a bunch of gyrating bodies at a rave out in the desert. How do we know the party takes place in the desert? Because the following scenes show a group of kids moseying down the highway in the middle of the desert, a group of kids that attended the aforementioned rave. Let's introduce the cannon fodder...er, the characters, shall we? We've got a mouthy Goth type chick named Cashie (Kelsey Wedeen), Neil (Brent Taylor), Lee (Ryan De'Rouen), Angela (Renee Madison Cole), Harmony (Jill Jacobs), her best friend Tara (Ashley Elizabeth), and Loopz (Aaron Buer). Loopz, I should note, initially ranks as one of the most irritating characters in the history of cinema. He's a white guy who thinks he's black, meaning he talks like a ghetto thug. Seriously. Lots of "Yo's!" and "Aiights" tumble from his mouth every other second. He's so irritating, in fact, that an extra on the DVD consists of nothing more than twenty or thirty seconds of him spouting off. They call this something like "The most irritating twenty seconds in film history." Funny!
Anyway, I'm getting off the point. Not that there's much of a point to this movie, mind you, but we'll slog through the rudimentary details anyway. The kids decide to head off the beaten track in search of a hidden cache of Mary Jane. Instead of finding it, they roll right into Nightmare Alley. A stop at a gas station inhabited by a younger version of Crazy Ralph from "Friday the 13th" (let's call him Crazy Petey) supplies the requisite warning about doom and gloom to come, as well as showing us the girls bouncing around in shorts so tight that I worried parts of their bodies would fall off for lack of circulation. After this nonsense, it's time for the obligatory "run off the road and get stuck" scene. I think it's Lee, Neil, and Angela that eventually wander off, but I'm not sure. Names aren't important. All three perish in extremely horrible ways, of course, thanks to a group of inbred freaks that drink some sort of liquor full of chemicals. In no time at all, the survivors back at the trailer--Loopz, Harmony, Tara, and Cashie--must contend with increasingly sinister incidents, such as finding weird symbols painted on the side of the mobile home, Cashie drinking some tainted fluid and freaking out, and a nighttime invasion that results in an abduction. I won't spoil the rest except to say if you've seen "The Hills Have Eyes" and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," you've seen the conclusion to "Detour."
A bigger bundle of cliches I've nivver seen, as my Irish ancestors might have said. "Detour" wallows in scenes and characters ripped off from other films. Inbred cannibals? Check. Wackos in a pickup truck chasing down a character? Yup. Heroic chick saving the day? You bet. False scares around every corner? Oh yeah! Mindless banter and banal insults dished out with the rapidity of machine gun fire? Uh huh. It's all here, but for some reason it works better in "Detour" than in all the other low budget crud currently clogging the arteries of horror fans the world over. Loopz, who starts out as an irritant on par with bamboo shoots stuffed under your fingernails, actually becomes an amusing--nay, endearing--presence. You could've knocked me over with a feather when I realized I liked this character! Congratulations to actor Aaron Buer for giving a stereotype some serious dimension. And then there's the gore, which really works in this movie. Legs ground into chowder under tires, more than one impalement (!), and stabbings and slashings galore gave the movie added chops. "Detour" is a delight for gorehounds.
Like most low budget productions on DVD, extras runneth over. A commentary track with director Steve Taylor, a behind the scenes documentary with plenty of cast interviews and goofing off (oddly titled "Hell's Highway," a name they should've gone with), cast auditions, trailers, and an extended opening sequence that adds even MORE gore to the shenanigans (re: innards). I got a huge surge out of seeing someone finally do a low budget ripoff right, but I'm still going to give this one four stars since it took a long time to get to the inbred cannibals. Nonetheless, if you love horror like I love horror, give this one a go posthaste.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Good, December 15, 2003
This review is from: Detour (DVD)
I was suprised. I started this movie, and very quickly I felt like I was in for a night of boredom. And that held for about 15 minutes or so in to the movie. Then the characters started to grow on me a bit,even the white ebonics guy. And then things started to get really freaky! The cast works very well once they get a hold on their characters, and everyone gives their all. Yes, there are annoying elements, like the white ebonics guy, but even he starts to grow during the movie, and towards the end I wanted him to live, just like the rest of the group. The soundtrack works very well, and has a little bit of techno, a little bit of rock, and a little bit of actually scoring that sounds amazing. There are also some very well shot scenes, and the movie looks very professional. While not the best movie ever, and far from original (it's like Wrong Turn meets The Hills Have Eyes meets Scream meets a zombie movie), it is still one of the better straight to video outings that has been released recently. And to top it all off, it has a great sense of humor at times, making some of the slower scenes, and scenes of character building enjoyable. So I give it four stars. The only thing holding it back from five is the first 15 minutes or so.
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