Jen and her boyfriend Darius are going on a hike to the Appalachian Trail, together with two other couples: Adam and Mia, and Gary and Luis. When they arrive at the small town in rural Virginia, they immediately get on the wrong foot with some of the locals. And when they begin their hike, they do of course commit the worst mistake of all which have been warned about so clearly: going off the trail. Every year, people die when hiking the Appalachian Trail, but sure…let’s tempt fate a little. It doesn’t go long until something happens: a huge tree trunk suddenly rolls down the hill and Gary gets crushed by it. Luis is totally distraught over the loss of his boyfriend, and on top of it all they cannot find their way back. They have no choice but to set up camp for the night, and the next day they wake up to find their cellphones are gone…and they also can’t see Mia anywhere. Close by, they find an old plaque dated “1859“, commemorating the creation of the “Foundation“, which were a group of settlers who fled to the mountains because they believed the end of the US was near. Obviously, they still live there, and the people who enter their realm do not get out alive.
Wrong Turn (aka Wrong Turn: The Foundation) is a horror film from 2021, which is some kind of reboot of the Wrong Turn franchise. It is directed by Mike P. Nelson and written by Alan McElroy, who is the franchise’s creator. It was theatrically released for only one day, on January 26, 2021, by Saban Films. It received fairly positive reviews, and grossed $4.8 million at the box office and $2.1 million in home sales. It is also the first film in the Wrong Turn franchise to actually have been filmed in the United States, as the previous ones were filmed in Canada and Bulgaria.
Wrong Turn is taking a different approach in this reboot, and instead of a bunch of inbred cannibal hillbillies killing off innocent travelers, it’s now a cult that’s behind it all. The cult, who is calling themselves the Foundation, believed in making an ideal place for themselves. Doesn’t sound that bad, right? Well, we all know that the creation of some people’s Utopia inevitably ends with the birth of some kind of Hell on earth, and this is no exception. While the previous installments in the franchise had the lunacy of the hillbillies as the threat, the cult’s vision of a perfect world and how to treat everyone who doesn’t fit in it, serves as a possibly even bigger threat. That being said, the build-up involves a bit of justified reaction from the cult due to the previous behaviour of the hikers, so there’s an attempt at trying to justify the view from both sides here. At least until a certain point.
There are some kills here that are grisly enough, and while there’s isn’t very much of this kind the ones displayed are effective enough. There’s a definite feeling of being lost and trapped between the characters, and while there are some things that fails to make everything entirely convincing all the time, it was a fun enough watch. Also, the ending was a nice touch.
Wrong Turn is a decent enough horror film and a reboot that does things a bit differently from the previous films in the franchise. I can see how this would easily put off many of the fans of the earlier films (very much like Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin did to that franchise’s fans), but as an easy-going horror flick for a lazy day this is a perfectly fine pick.
Director: Mike P. Nelson
Writer: Alan B. McElroy
Country & year: USA, 2021
Actors: Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, Bill Sage, Emma Dumont, Dylan McTee, Daisy Head, Matthew Modine, Vardaan Arora, Adrian Favela, Tim DeZarn, Rhyan Elizabeth Hanavan
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9110170/
