Cody watches the reboot of the Wrong Turn franchise.
Eighteen years after writing the original Wrong Turn and helping start a series of films built around inbred cannibals, screenwriter Alan B. McElroy has returned to the franchise to script a reboot that removes all of the "inbred cannibal" stuff. He stuck with the basic set-up of six young people running into trouble in the West Virginia backwoods, but beyond that the new film tells an entirely different story. The biggest problem with the resulting film is the fact that it's called Wrong Turn, because it doesn't deliver what anyone who's familiar with the previous six Wrong Turns is going to be expecting when they put it on.
Directed by Mike P. Nelson, the film begins with Matthew Modine's character Scott coming to the small West Virginia town where his daughter Jen (Charlotte Vega) and her friends disappeared while hiking the Appalachian Trail six weeks earlier. We then jump back in time to see what exactly happened to Jen and her cohorts Darius (Adain Bradley), Milla (Emma Dumont), Adam (Dylan McTee), Gary (Vardaan Arora), and Luis (Adrian Favela). Even though McElroy is a person of color himself, every character in the original film had been white. He and Nelson assembled a much more diverse group this time around; Jen is in an interracial relationship with a Black man, there's a gay couple, there's a Latino, and another member of the group is from India. This bunch stands out so much in the small town they pass through, you might start thinking that the villains in this film are going to turn out to be some disapproving rednecks. Thankfully, that's not the case. Nelson and McElroy have something much more interesting and unique in store for viewers.
Even though the film is called Wrong Turn, there's not really any moment where the characters take a wrong turn. Instead, there's a moment where they make the mistake of wandering off of the Appalachian Trail to take a look at the sights. That's when they enter the territory of The Foundation, a small society of people who have been living in the wilderness since before the Civil War. They saw the war between the states coming and decided to remove themselves from the equation, living in isolation to preserve their idea of the "real America". They don't take kindly to outsiders, their land is covered with booby-traps, and soon enough Jen and her friends are coming across these booby-traps and having encounters with members of The Foundation who wear animal skulls over their heads and appear to be dangerous.
If you're expecting this to be a straightforward slasher about the hikers getting knocked off one-by-one by Foundation members, prepare to have your expectations subverted again. There is plenty of slashing to be seen in this movie, but the people from The Foundation aren't just homicidal maniacs. Led by Bill Sage as Venable, this group has its own laws, its own court, and is even open to taking in new members. There's a reason why not all of the hikers are dead by the time Scott comes looking for them six weeks later... and when the film gets to that reason, it might be the dividing line of whether or not a viewer is going to enjoy this Wrong Turn, because that's when it does something very different than its predecessors did.
I thoroughly enjoyed this new Wrong Turn, I found the story it tells to be very interesting and I had fun with the moments of violence and slashing. I didn't even mind the 110 minute running time, which I thought would be an issue when the movie started, because in general movies like this should try to be as close to 90 minutes as possible. (The original Wrong Turn was 84 minutes, perfect for what that was.) I was just left with the feeling that it should not have been called Wrong Turn, and not just because there is no "wrong turn". It has been established that Wrong Turn movies are about backwoods cannibals, and it's jarring to switch that up seven films into a franchise. This movie should have been called The Foundation. But I understand why it's called Wrong Turn. It's a financial decision, it's marketing. A lot more people are going to watch this because it's called Wrong Turn and sold as a reboot than would watch it if it were sold as an original movie called The Foundation.
I do encourage watching the movie, it's totally worth checking out, and is better made and more watchable than a lot of the Wrong Turn sequels were. If viewers can be open-minded to the different approach and go along with the changes, they'll be rewarded with a film that is surprisingly good.
Saban Films is giving Wrong Turn an On Demand, Digital, Blu-ray, and DVD release on February 23rd.
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