Review: Wrong Turn

A group of college kids (Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, and Vardaan Arora among them) venture to the small West Virginian town of Wrenwood, to hike the Appalachian trail. In addition to the surly local rednecks, as our protagonists venture further into the mountains they discover a far more sinister and unwelcoming populace. A violent mistake leads to the group getting into deep trouble with a community of reclusive mountain people (led by Bill Sage) whose brand of justice is harsh and uncompromising. Meanwhile, Matthew Modine turns up as the father of one of the Millennials, looking for his missing daughter Vega. Can he get to her in time?

 

The 2003 “Wrong Turn” for me was one of the best horror films from a shithouse era from 1997-2004, and a pretty solid backwoods horror film. 2003 is longer ago than you likely think, so I can understand why we got a remake/reboot in 2021. However, having watched all of the sequels, it doesn’t feel long enough to be revisiting the well. Of those sequels, the second and sixth films were OK, the others…not so much. I had at least hoped that this film would do something different and interesting. I had heard that was much the case at least, but series mainstay Alan B. McElroy (“Halloween 4”, “Tekken”, “The Marine” franchise) being the scribe yet again did have me a touch hesitant here. It’s not like McElroy did anything terribly different with the sequels. Directed by Mike P. Nelson (whose post-apocalyptic film “The Domestics” had its moments), I have to say I didn’t quite see what the fuss was here, though in fairness it’s still probably the best one since the original. It’s pretty damn similar to the first film plot-wise, just with a few “Midsommar” cosmetic changes. Basically, instead of inbred hillbillies we get verbose Viking fetishist Appalachian separatists.

 

One of the changes here is particularly unhelpful: All the cutaways to Matthew Modine’s character are unnecessary and uninteresting. The original worked better largely because it was all so simple and streamlined. It was lean and mean, or as mean as 2003 would allow (We were just starting to get out of the frustratingly neutered “Scream” era of horror at this point, but it’s hardly as intense as the original “The Hills Have Eyes”). Our main protagonists are your standard 00s-era youngsters, just more racially and sexually diverse than the 2003 version. I actually didn’t find them particularly likeable, and wasn’t sure if that was the point or not. Lead actress Charlotte Vega seemed a touch smug to me, and I don’t know if that was the vibe she was meant to be going for. I don’t think the film is going for a “Long Weekend”-esque ‘these arseholes deserve it’ vibe so much as they just rub the wrong people the wrong way. I think the film goes a touch too far in that direction, though. They’re not outrightly awful people, just smug and extremely clueless about how to interact with people from outside of their middle-class Millennial bubble. It didn’t really make me care about their plight anymore than it made me want to see them die. I also have to dock points for setting up a surprisingly downbeat ending only to completely unravel it and chicken out during the end credits. What a shame there.

 

In a cast full of fairly decent performances Bill Sage is quite good as the imposing lead faux-Viking, and former “Bold and the Beautiful” actor Adain Bradley is a lot better here than he was there. The film is nicely brutal at times, and there’s a few interesting moments and ideas sprinkled about. However, the rest is your standard backwoods horror film with 2000-era pretty young people being picked off. Although far from the worst backwoods horror film, this one’s still not quite up to the level of a recommendation. A lot of these films tend to be a bit same-y to me and that’s pretty much the case here. It’s…OK.

 

Rating: C+