Woodyanders Review of Detour

Detour (2003 Video)

A pretty good and enjoyable low-budget indie horror item

[7/10 · 10 September 2007]

A bunch of obnoxious party-hearty kids in an RV attend a rowdy rave bash held deep in the desert. After the rave ends the kids decide to venture off the main highway onto a somewhere on the beaten path uncharted road in order to score some primo peyote. Instead the kids run smack dab into a bunch of ferocious hillbilly cannibal lunatics with a serious case of the uglies and a jarring lack of civility who are hungry for fresh young meat. Naturally, the kids have to get in touch with their savage killer animal side pronto or otherwise they're all going to buy it. This indie horror item has a lot going for it: crisp and muscular direction by S. Lee Taylor, a central premise with pleasing echoes of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and especially "The Hills Have Eyes," copious violence that's every bit as gory and brutal as it ought to be, acceptable acting from an attractive cast of youthful unknowns, ample shocks which are appropriately grisly, sudden and visceral, slick and accomplished production values, a rousing pre-credits cameo by Tiffany Shepis, and a really cool thrashin' ending credits garage rock theme song. The only drawbacks are the rather poky opening third and the fact that the teens are insufferably idiotic and unappealing to the point where you don't care whether they live or die (the white homie dude is particularly annoying and unbearable). Those criticisms aside, this fright feature nonetheless rates as an above average little shocker.