12/28/2022 0 Comments Wrong turn 1 release dateIt’s a smart and gruesome tale of the future vs the past that breathes new life into a franchise that had long-since become a lumbering, grotesque monster. And it’s also happy to embrace the trappings of its predecessors, with gore that will appease the bloodhounds. It has ideas simmering beneath the surface that would feel just as at home in an Ari Aster film (and there's more head trauma than in his movies) but it isn’t afraid to go for some thrills – the first major death is a head-spinning scramble for survival. Questions are asked about who is really the perpetrators of “brutality” – those who wage a war against their own people or those who fight back? A culture clash that has evolved from our typical slasher film. It’s a civilisation that has never progressed facing up to modernity. Thankfully, the switch to folk horror gives things a fascinating dimension, as does the “yuppy hipsters” vs people of the land dynamic. Wrong Turn could have rested on its laurels and just rehashed a well-trodden path. And she’s nifty with a knife or bow and arrow when required. She’s smart and logical when self-preservation is all she has left. She calls out the behaviour and attitudes of her friends when decisions are made that ultimately have an impact on their own wellbeing. ![]() She’s not afraid to put her morality front and centre when things begin to go wrong. And Vega brings us a new Final Girl to cheer on in the shape of Jen. The community’s treatment of those who break their rules is horrific. Calm in demeanour, he holds court to determine the fate of Jen and her surviving friends after a breathtaking moment of savage violence by group hot-head Adam puts everyone in peril. Nelson and McElroy’s film performs a masterstroke by ditching the cannibalistic humanoids, replacing them with what could be the original doomsday preppers, who just happen to wear the skulls of animals and (possibly) top up their members with unsuspecting tourists.įrom the first shocking moment – reminiscent of a certain death in the Final Destination series – Wrong Turn becomes a survival horror that doesn’t pull its punches.īill Sage (We Are What We Are Hap and Leonard) as Foundation leader John Venable is a wonderfully insidious new villain. While the set-up feels like familiar territory, the rug is well and truly pulled from beneath us. But there’s something more sinister at work within the boundary walls. For 170 years, they have kept themselves separate from the townsfolk, living off the land. As it so happens, a community of people known as the Foundation fled to the mountains ahead of the American Civil War and set up a new home in the forest. ![]() What they stumble upon is much, MUCH worse. Rewind to the start of that six-week period, we meet Jen and her chums – beau Darius (Adain Bradley), Milla (Emma Dumont), Adam (Dylan McTee), Luis (Adrian Favela) and Gary (Vardaan Arora).Īrriving in the town for their adventure, things take an ominous turn when the owner of their B&B warns Jen in an American Werewolf in London style to “stay on the trail, the land is unforgiving.” Unfortunately for our – shock horror! – actually likeable band of pals, Darius wants to veer off track in search of a Confederate fort. It’s been six weeks since last contact with the group and the silence is worrying. ![]() In its place, McElroy brings us a folk horror tale that doesn’t skimp on the gruesome deaths while dialling up the creepiness and tension.įor this new iteration, worried dad Scott (Matthew Modine) turns up in a town that acts as an entry point to the Appalachian Trail searching for his missing daughter Jen (Charlotte Vega) and her pals. Gone are the backwoods country bumpkins killing young city folk enjoying the great outdoors for fun. That particular series peaked with Joe Lynch’s 2007 sequel Wrong Turn 2: Dead End.Īfter that, the subsequent follow-ups became an endurance test that struggled to capture the nastiness or inventiveness of the first two.įast forward to 2021 and Alan McElroy, writer of the original film, has crafted a reboot – directed by Mike P Nelson – that (thankfully) does away with the tiresome trope of deformed people being monsters that must be feared and goes in a totally new direction. ![]() Taking its cues from a myriad films that came before it, we watched as inbred mutants picked off unlikeable young characters one at a time in creative and disgusting ways. Back in 2003, a new horror franchise was launched in the shape of Wrong Turn.
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