0 STARS: Vanilla Ice meets "The Hills Have Eyes"
HorrorMan | The Marsten House | 10/13/2007
(1 out of 5 stars)
"In "Detour", a group of absolutely totally stupid people take a "short cut" or a "detour" in the desert out in the middle of nowhere in order to come upon some dope. Well, they wreck their RV (sound familiar), and they get stuck in the middle of the desert. That's not their only problem though. Besides their stupidity and the fact that they are stranded in the desert, there are also some cannibals in the desert. Well, the only question is whether the cannibals will eat them all or whether some of them will sadly escape.
I know my synopsis of the movie seems harsh towards the characters, but these characters are truly stupid and ridiculous people. The makers of this movie went out of their way to create the most obnoxious and stupid "protagonists" (that's a laugh) that's ever been created in any movie, not just a horror movie. The characters are not only not likeable, but they are despicable and revolting in their idiocracy so much that the viewer is not able to become engrossed in the movie itself. The intelligent viewer does not relate to these stupid people and, in a sense, the protagonists are just as bad as the cannibals in my opinion (just in a different way), and so the movie comes off as ridiculous and absurd. Indeed, the acting is terrible in this movie, absolutely awful. While the acting does not have to be great or even good, it does have to be able to pull the viewer into the setting of the movie and the situation of the characters. The fact that the characters are so ridiculous hinders the viewer from being able to make that leap of faith.
Aside from the horrendous acting and ridiculous characters, "Detour" really is nothing more than an inferior rip-off of "The Hills Have Eyes", which is a decent but not a great horror movie in and of itself. In all honesty, if you've seen "Hills" (original or remake), you've pretty much seen "Detour", although as I have said, "The Hills Have Eyes" is much better all the way around, but that's not saying much. The villains in the "Detour" do not look nearly as gruesome or as formidable as the villains in "Hills". In fact, in a sense, one could argue that some of the villains in "Detour" looked more normal than our protagonists in this truly backwards flick. Particularly obnoxioius was the Vanilla Ice look-a-like who was absolutely repulsive in his stupid role. One actually hopes that he gets killed by movie's end. Yeah, it's that bad.
If you love movies like "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Wrong Turn", you might want to check this out, but I would advise against it because, as I said, it's nothing more than a "Hills" ripoff/rehash with no significant deviations or distinctions to give it an identity of its own, save for the absolute and total stupidity of its sad and pathetic protagonistic characters."