US/Germany/UK | 2021 | Directed by Mike P. Nelson
Logline: A bunch of friends hiking on the Appalachian Trial run afoul of a community of people whose descendants have been hiding out in the mountainous forest for hundreds of years.
Jen (Charlotte Vega), her boyfriend Darius (Adain Bradley), and their friends Milla (Emma Dumont), Adam (Dylan McTee), Luis (Adrian Favela), and Gary (Vardaan Arora) have hit the Appalachian Trial for a weekend trek. Darius suggests they step off the marked path and look for a ruined Federation fort that he seems confident of its location. Jen is reluctant (seemingly the only one with a modicum of common sense), but Darius sways her, and off they trudge into the thick wilderness.
It isn’t long before they’re completely lost and fed up. To add injury to insult a massive log comes rolling down from higher up the bank causing the group to scatter like terrified rabbits. It seems the locals haven’t taken to fondly to these urban upstarts. There’ll be a lot more tears before bedtime.
The original film from nearly twenty years ago was a well-made hillbilly slasher with some terrific special effects makeup courtesy of Stan Winston’s team, and a genuinely creepy atmosphere, a slick, but knowing tribute to those grimy 70s exploitation flicks. It was essentially a star vehicle for Eliza Dushku, who was big at the time, but the rest of the cast were solid, with memorable villain characters, Three Finger, Saw-Tooth, and One-Eye.
Then a whole train-wreck of straight-to-DVD sequels and prequels poured out (five of them!) and the series was dragged deeper and deeper into the forest mire. Perhaps that’s why the idea of a reboot seemed like a good idea. The co-production even got the original screenwriter, Alan McElroy, back on board, and the movie is helmed by a foley artist turned director.
This surprise reboot feels entirely unnecessary, and is tenuously related to the original, but I guess that’s what the prerogative of a “reboot” is. The new folk-horror angle is derivative at best, and risible - especially in the latter stages of the narrative - at worst. Taking several pages from Midsommar, this new version doesn’t feature any of the striking mutations of the original, instead a ridiculously clean-cut Bill Sage, with immaculate beard and hair, spouting some strange accent, is the patriarch of The Foundation, a cluster of families who decided to leave the ruinous state of America’s society on the edge of Civil War to live a self-sustainable and secretive existence in the dense confines of the Appalachian forest and have been hoarding wayward city slickers ever since.
So Jen and her friends end up rudely dissing the locals and aggressively disrupting the rural community and, subsequently, are brought to trial. Foundation law says they must be punished and/or assimilated into the community. Meanwhile Jen’s dad (Matthew Modine), who hasn’t heard from his daughter in two weeks, hits the road on a search and rescue mission.
Wrong Turn (sub-titled The Foundation in some territories) isn’t badly made in terms of its production, but it holds none of the creepy charm of the original, and although brutal and gory in places, much of the actual violence occurs off-screen, relying instead on aftermath, which feels like a cop-out.
While the performances are fine, with Vega easily the stand-out, Modine and Sage must need the pay cheques. The script feels like an entire season condensed into a nearly two-hour running time, especially the second half. Alan McElroy has tried to make a more layered, thematically heavier narrative, but has failed. The turning of the tables is totally unconvincing. Almost overnight Jen becomes some kind of ruthless, emotionally-stunted warrior, choosing to kill her friends rather than rescue them. The ending is plain ridiculous, even succumbing to the cheeseball tactic of a daydream sequence just to provide alternate scenario thrills, the nightmare finally collapsing in on itself. There is even the setup for a sequel, with Jen’s boyfriend abandoned with The Foundation, so I’m sure Jen - in full mercenary mode - will take on the community in order to rescue him. But who cares?
Yup, the chief problem with Wrong Turn is that it’s slick, but hollow, lacking character and extremity, that it offers nothing fresh, covers no new ground, hasn’t upped the ante, or pushed the boundaries, and only reinforces how other movies have done it better, including the original, which, in itself, was a conscious nod to past movies, but at least provided viewers with genuine thrills and palpable atmosphere, and a modicum of style. This Wrong Turn is definitely two steps backward.