Has enough time truly passed to reboot 2003’s backwoods horror hit Wrong Turn (which itself aped scores of earlier films with the same general story)? Modest points in this version go to screenwriter Alan McElroy and director Mike P. Nelson who competently mount a well-produced picture. But since the core is malarkey, the picture is ultimately a throwaway that fails to do anything too special with its shopworn premise.
It seems pointless to detail the plot, which will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it’s the old stay-on-the-path-lest-be-tortured-by-the-local-yokels chestnut, not exactly revisionist. There is even a bit of The Blair Witch Project paranoia here, however pallid. One wonders why Matthew Modine, a fine actor, took a featured role here; perhaps it read better than it plays.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A group of young New Jersey-ites take a road trip to hike The Appalachian Trail. Why? We don’t know. There are three generic couples—blonde lead Jen (Charlotte Vega, competent) and boyfriend Darius (Adain Bradley), Milla (Emma Dumont) and Adam (Dylan McTee) and token gay couple Gary (Vardaan Arora) and Luis (Adrian Favela).
Despite being warned by the locals not to veer from the path (cliché) and after encountering a mute, wild child adolescent from the mountains (cliché), they nonetheless go directly into the woods and walk off the path (cliché). It isn’t long before they are good and lost (cliché), leading to finger pointing, arguments (cliché) and suddenly missing cell phones (cliché). Someone is violently killed.
Meanwhile, Jen’s dad back home (Modine) becomes concerned when she doesn’t check in, and drives down to the Virgina retracing her steps and last ping (cliché). Someone gets caught in a beartrap (cliché). Mountain men in fur pelts move in for their prey (cliché). Soon enough, there’s tell of a secret forest society named “The Foundation” (cliché) whose members apparently took to the hills a century or two ago thinking the end of the world was nigh. In the second half of the picture we meet The Foundation’s members, and Wrong Turn switches gears from backwoods survival thriller to- well, something else that is thematically larger yet less fun.
Amidst this bloated two-hour trial is at least one unintentionally hilarious moment where a massively log is hurled down a steep hill hoping to mow the kids down. The hill, dense with other large trees which the youths must dodge to evade the rolling log, somehow does not stop the lengthy log’s trek, despite the obviously thick forest in its way. They kids are not smart enough to just step sideways and let the log pass, trying in vain to outrun its vertical plunge.
There is also an emphasis on gore with close-ups of pulverized heads, open wounds, mutilations and other viscera, which I suppose are intended to up the survival stakes but instead provide just momentary distractions from the dim-bulb bickering of helpless characters who may be captive in the woods but are really trapped by a pretentiously overblown movie.
McElroy, whose output includes what is considered an all-timer stinker in 2002’s actioner Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, and 1988’s Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers, knows his way around a B-movie and strives to elevate Wrong Turn into something thematically complex during its second half. The trouble is, Ari Aster’s Midsommar beat him to it (and so did 1973’s The Wicker Man, for that matter). Perhaps all horror movie fundamentalist cults are not created equal, and the genre can always happily accommodate a new set of robes, rituals, sacrifices, Stockholm Syndrome, eerie children and inbred families—it’s just lost its luster.
Wrong Turn concludes on a surprise coda of violent retribution will prove a satisfying switcheroo for anyone still invested.
2 stars.
