Wrong Turn review: Is the horror reboot worth a watch?
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Wrong Turn marks the seventh instalment in the horror franchise that started back in 2003, but fortunately you don't have to have watched the previous movies in the series.
The new movie marks a reboot and a promised fresh start for the gory series that has focused on deformed cannibals, such as Three Finger and Saw Tooth, as they chop their way through whatever unfortunate victims come across their path.
Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings, already told the origins of the cannibals. Now Alan B McElroy, who wrote the original movie, has returned to the franchise for the first time. It wasn't clear what path he would take for the reboot, but few fans would have expected it not to feature a single deformed cannibal.
Instead, Wrong Turn ends up being connected to the franchise in name only and you're left wondering what the point of it all was.
Even though there aren't any cannibals, the reboot does at least keep the setup of a group of people taking the titular wrong turn they weren't supposed to. Told to keep to the path on the Appalachian trail, they take a detour off the beaten path that sees their dream trip turn into a nightmare.
Jennifer (Charlotte Vega), her boyfriend Darius (Adain Bradley), and their friends find themselves coming face-to-face with The Foundation, a self-sufficient community who have lived in the mountains for centuries and, unsurprisingly, they don't take too kindly to outsiders.
A gruesome game of survival ensues between the two groups as The Foundation responds to this outside threat, while Jennifer's father Scott (Matthew Modine) ventures into the mountains to find his daughter.
But will he manage to make it in time before The Foundation dish out their own brand of swift and brutal justice, or will he find himself facing the same dark fate?
Part of the problem with Wrong Turn lies in the subplot of Jennifer's father searching for her. The movie starts with his quest before cutting back to six weeks earlier with Jennifer and her friends on their fateful trip.
Since she's still missing more than a month later, it saps any tension out of a good chunk of the movie that's not really resolved until the much-improved final act. Here, we finally have no idea what'll happen next and it's when the reboot is at its most entertaining, with Modine in full hero mode.
Perhaps if the scenes of Jennifer in the mountains and her father's search were interspersed, we could have been tricked into thinking they were happening at the same time. As it is though, we're just waiting for her to fall foul of whatever awaits her and there aren't enough interesting twists thrown into the mix to keep you engaged, bar an impressively bloody log death.
At times, McElroy and director Mike P Nelson tease that Wrong Turn won't develop the way you think, especially in terms of what we expect from an isolated community in the mountains. Those moments are fleeting though, events soon pan out in a conventional fashion. Although, The Foundation does have some pretty grim traditions, even compared to other isolated communities in horror.
The overall feeling is one of a missed opportunity, as Wrong Turn could have used the reboot approach to upend everything we expect from the franchise, rather than just playing our familiar notes without the cannibals.
It's telling that one fake-out sequence late in the movie provides such a surprise as it just highlights what the rest of Wrong Turn is missing.
There's nothing to shock here. It all feels safe, as it seeks to deliver standard gory thrills and little else. In fact, you could swap the title for any other 'teens in peril' slasher. And you'd be better off taking a right turn, back to the original.
Wrong Turn is available to buy now on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, and other digital platforms, and will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 3.
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