Wrong Turn: Film Review

Cast: Charlotte Vega, Matthew Modine, Bill Sage

Director: Mike P Nelson

The Wrong Turn franchise began back in 2003 with Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum Eliza Dushku facing off against hillbillies. and launching another relatively soulless slasher series.

The 2021 Wrong Turn movie comes after the sixth in 2014 lost everyone's interest.

But it's not right to dismiss Mike P Nelson's take on the franchise, which is subtitled The Foundation.

Granted, it doesn't mess too much with what you've come to expect. In this latest, a group of liberal friends (an interracial pairing, a gay couple and a heteronormal duo) ignore advice to stay off the beaten track on the Appalachian Trail, and end up hunted by The Foundation, a group set up long before the Confederate War tore through America.

If Wrong Turn starts as an all too familiar horror, the competency displayed proves wildly unnerving at about the 50 minute mark of the movie. While there are all manner of traps and a few early kills served up early on, the film comes more into its own when it introduces more of The Foundation and their philosophies on life, embodied by Bill Sage's unsettling leader.

Here, it turns into a more ideological piece that's content to revel in some of its gruesomeness but does more to humanise both sides of the conflict, and even leaves you feeling like the outsiders are the transgressors. (There are more than a few elements of stories told in the Far Cry video game series at play here, with morality and audience loyalty wavering.)

But it's disappointing to report that the film throws all of that morally grey high ground away in the final third of the movie, resorting to a tried and true hunter killer, cat and mouse game horror fare.

That's not to say that it's not capably executed. Modine and Vega (who reminds of Jessica Rothke's strong and likeable performance in Happy Death Day) make for good solid protagonists as two side stories collide, and prove the journey is sometimes more worthy than the destination. But some broader character strokes earlier on, as well as a troubling lower end treatment of the gay couple prove there are one or two wrong turns taken at a basic script level.

Wrong Turn may prove a bit of a rebirth for the series, and certainly does more than enough to keep the tired tropes of the genre at bay - there's just a feeling that with a slightly tighter focus at a script level, and less of a rushed ending, it could have been a Wrong Turn that was definitely worth taking.