Written by Alan B. McElroy
Directed by Mike P. Nelson
John: "I was wrong about you, Jen. You are strong."
Jen: "I had to be if I was ever gonna get away from you."
Okay, forewarning time. As a horror franchise, I have no real attachment to Wrong Turn whatsoever. I've only seen the original once and have never bothered looking out for the five sequels that followed but for some strange reason, I decided to watch this one and the results were largely mixed to be honest.
The story is simple enough - six people decide to go on the Appalachian trial and by the end of this, only one makes it out of the traumatic events that follows but as the end led to believe, you can never escape the creepy, villainous tribe of the piece, also known as the Foundation.
Our six protagonists are three couples - two straight couples with Jen (Charlotte Vega) and Darius (Adain Bradley) and Adam (Dylan McTee) and Milla (Emma Dumont) along with gay couple, Gary (Vardaan Arora) and Luis (Adrian Favela). I'm gonna tell you right now, there's zero point in being even the tiniest bit invested in any of these pairings.
It's great for a horror film to have a gay couple among the main characters. Less great would be the way that Gary got quickly dispatched and Luis himself suffered a fate almost worse than death until he too was eventually killed off. So close but yet still drastically too far in the wrong direction for LGBT rep in the horror genre.
That's not to say the straight pairings fare better either to be fair. While trying to escape the Foundation, Milla fell into one of the many traps set out by the savage group and Adam paid for bashing a member's head in by getting his own bashed in.
The remaining couple of the piece are only spared by the Foundation's brutal leader Venable (Bill Sage) by Jen literally offering her and Darius's services to the tribe, which saw the latter eventually being brainwashed as the former got help escaping with her father, Scott (Matthew Modine), tribe girl Ruthie (Rhyan Elizabeth Hanavan) while also dealing with jealous tribeswoman Edith (Daisy Head) and some other threats along the way.
As baddies go, the Foundation are pretty poor even if Bill Sage does a little to dimensionalise his character, Venable. Charlotte Vega does a decent job as Jen but I'm not sure the character would go down in the pantheon of final girls, Everyone on the other hand are poorly served, though given rather brutal outcomes that have no emotional weight at all.
- The alternative title for this movie is Wrong Turn: The Foundation which would help differentiate it from the 2003 original movie. It only opened in US cinemas for one night.
- The film has no opening credits at all for some odd reason. You have to wait until the closing credits to even get the title.
- There's no connection to any of the sequels but it's not entirely remaking the original either.
- Chronology: Gonna assume 2020, which was when it was meant to be released.
Wrong Turn definitely is a mess of a movie. Not quite another sequel but perhaps not enough of a reboot and the Foundation are just pretty poor characters along with the main characters. Maybe this franchise should just stay dead until someone can come up with a far better idea than this one.
Rating: 4 out of 10
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