When I started this project, I actually thought I hadn't seen the first Wrong Turn. Even going into it, it seemed both familiar and completely new. By the end of the film, I realized that I had not only seen it once, I'd probably seen it a good half dozen times over the years. With performances from some of my favorites, Jeremy Sisto (Six Feet Under), Desmond Harrington (Dexter) and Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), it shouldn't have been a surprise that I'd seen the flick before. What really surprised me was that such a nondescript slasher could have spawned a franchise of four more films. So, feeling pretty safe in the assumption that I hadn't seen the other four flicks, I strapped in for a work week of Wrong Turn films to see where the franchise stayed between the lines and where it took some detours onto shaky ground.
I'm back again for another dose of Dusking Til Dawning, and this week the series really starts to come into its own. In the first two episodes, I both bemoaned the fact that it was adhering so closely to the film while skimping on the expanded story-line to flesh out the tale. With this week's episode, "Mistress", the series strikes out on its own, and it begins to build a world familiar to fans of Tarantino and Rodriguez's work while plying a mythos original to the series. Plus, this week we get a spin on the "I could do that for you" scene, a mess of freaky visions, and Jake Busey.
When I heard that Robert Rodriguez was going to bring From Dusk 'till Dawn, the film he co-directed with Quentin Tarantino, to his new El Ray network as a series, I was skeptical. Now, after two episodes, which clock in at just under the running time of the original film, I feel cautiously skeptical. I still can't upgrade it to any level of optimism, but there are moments and performances that almost work in this expansion of the crime story/vampire tale.
