part of the USA living in the stone age in 1988?

Bonjour Breakwood!

It's a LITTLE exaggerated, but it isn't too far from the truth in some cases with the "stonge age" thing. I'm from North Carolina and we definitely have our fair share of hillbillies and rednecks and beyond in some areas around here. Especially when you get up into some of the rural areas in the mountains of North Carolina, and other states in this area like Virginia and West Virginia. You can find people that don't have running water, telephones, TV, or indoor plumbing. They grow their own food and raise their own live stock for meat and such, their nearest neighbor is miles away, etc. I've been through some parts of West Virginia that look like they're about 100 years behind the times. Heck just recently I went up to the mountains and DID see an old guy driving a beat up pick up from probably the 40's. It was rusted and looked like it was about to fall apart. A couple of years ago authorities found a shack in the middle of the mountains, and the guy was dead inside and nothing left but a skeleton. They determined he had been dead about 5 years. People knew of him but said he was a hermit and only came to town maybe once every couple of years if that. He was a hermit that "lived off the land" and would shoot at anyone that came onto his property. So they all left him alone.

Now in 2012 for people not to know what a camera is might be a stretch, but there definitely plenty of "mountain folk" still out there that don't live too much different than what's shown in the movie.

Now about the movie! It is corny and a little over the top. But to me it's still a cool story!

Here we go again...

The characters you are referring to in this movie are hillbillies, not rednecks. As unbelievable as it is to the arrogant elitists of the 'civilized' world, the social structure of the less densely populated areas of the world is actually quite complex. Redneck is not the derogatory term you think it is, but your inability to understand it, which inevitably leads to constant and blatant misuse, is somewhat insulting. What you think are rednecks are hillbillies, white trash, and a dozen other classes you can't even comprehend, let alone begin to understand.

LOL! I was thinking the same exact thing, Breakwood83!

There was no way those kids could be that dirty and those people could be living that bad.

There are people like this in the US...yes believe it or not. Poor people still exist...they live in the cities and they live in the mountains and the hills...and they look just like the people in this movie.

Do some research people.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, nobody else wanted them either.

Just wanted to echo some of what has been said here. The costuming was slightly over the top -- only by a little -- but a lot of what I saw rang true. I grew up in rural VA, where VA, WV, Tenn., and KY converge (don't envy me too much). It's a place of poverty, distrust of city folk, and a surprising amount of superstition that somehow often coexists with strongly held Christian beliefs. In a lot of ways, it really is a forgotten third world country -- a series of them really -- nestled right into the middle of the U.S. As another poster noted, you can find such areas within easy driving distance of many cities. I've come to view most of the people there as very well meaning people who do the best with the little they have in terms of resources and education. No part of me regrets leaving, though. I'm not surprised at all that people from other countries would question the veracity of the film's depiction -- it just isn't talked about much outside of horror films and the occasional PBS documentary series.

I grew up in a very rural area of Northeastern Kentucky, right on the West Virginia border, in the '70s and '80s. I lived right in the heart of coal country. While there were many, very poor people in the area, I never saw anyone who dressed or acted like the 1930s-esque family in the old pickup truck. There were plenty of people wearing thrift-store clothes, faded Molly Hatchet concert T-shirts, and ripped jeans driving 20 year old pickup trucks, but I never ran across any barefoot, ragged-dress- wearing urchins who would have been awed by a camera.

I used to love to wander through the woods as a kid/young man and occasionally stumbled across some true, living-off-the-grid hillbillies that literally wore buckskin and furs, but they were living out there by choice, not by necessity. I have no doubt that some of them were probably marijuana farmers, as that was quite the cash crop back then, and remote locations were preferred. They tended to be the unfriendly ones who made it clear that I should just turn around and head right back the way I came from.

One funny story: I remember one year the mining company decided to expand its operations and went around to all the homeowners in my area offering to buy mineral rights to their land. My dad said "no", but you could tell who in the area said "yes". They'd be living in a run down, single-wide trailer but, suddenly, there was a shiny, brand-new Trans Am or Camaro parked out front.

Dude there are places in the US that are like that now, in 2013. I live in North Carolina and there are some towns like that here, West Virginia , Sourh Carolina and Georgia.

I'm from San Jose, California, and even there, in the heart of technology (Silicon Valley), you can find scary hillbilly types in the woods just beyond town.

In fact some friends of mine went running on a mountain that overlooks the town, and were held at gunpoint by a guy who supposedly protects the mountain from trespassers. I'm always surprised what you can find in the hills.

I've also lived in West Virginia, and Maryland, so I guess I've seen it on both sides of the country.