Directed by Mike P. Nelson
Written by Alan B. McElroy
Starring Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, Bill Sage, Emma Dumont, Dylan McTee, and Matthew Modine
Rated R – language, violence, gore
Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes
In theaters and digital rental on Feb. 23

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

For one reason or another, I didn’t see Wrong Turn when it came into theaters in 2003. At the time, I was in college, and I was more likely to piggyback onto someone else’s movie plans, or see a movie if it garnered “hype.” Wrong Turn did not. Its cast was full of actors straddling the line between B and C-list; Jeremy Sisto, Eliza Dushku, Emmanuelle Chiriqui and Kevin Zegers. It turned a meager profit at the box office and spawned five (five!) equally unremarkable straight-to-video sequels.

Enter Mike P. Nelson, whose only previous feature film was a Kate Bosworth vehicle called The Domestics. Nelson and the original film’s writer, Alan B. McElroy try, this time, to deviate from the “backwoods cannibal savages” formula of the original Wrong Turn. We have a more diverse cast this go-around as well. This group of friends includes final girl Jen (Charlotte Vega), her boyfriend, Darius (Adain Bradley), a gay couple (Vardaan Arora and Adrian Favela), and another couple (Dylan McTee and Emma Dumont). They plan to hike the Appalachian Trail, starting in a small Georgia town. At a bar they’re approached by an angry drunk man looking to pick a fight (Tim DeZarn, the gas station attendant from Cabin in the Woods). He snaps at them, “you hipster freaks are the problem with this whole world.” Jen stands up for her friends; they aren’t a bunch of entitled brats, many of them are in grad school and working for noble causes. 

The first hour mostly bides its time with familiar beats. Hostile locals; a silent, ominous child; the loss of cell phone signals, and later, the phones themselves. Wrong Turn never warms the audience up for the violence that ensues. A rolling log comes for the crew, and the film claims its first victim by squishing him like jam against a tree. We see an eye, we see some hair, we see the top row of teeth. In spite of the gruesome violence and elaborate traps, Wrong Turn is a film you could easily lose interest in during its first hour.

Things turn much more interesting once we find out that the people living in the woods are not “hillbillies” or cannibals, but a sovereign community of people called The Foundation. See, when the Civil War began, a group of people wanted to avoid what they saw as an “Armageddon between the states” to start its own world, isolated in the forest, living off the land. “We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us." These folk are not grunting cannibals, but rather, a group of people with their own language, well versed in hunting and weaponry, led by a man named Venable (Bill Sage, We Are What We Are).

The members of The Foundation dress in robes made of moss and dirt, with masks of animal skulls. In introducing us to The Foundation, and with some of the gore (two face mashings!), Wrong Turn seems to take a couple hints from Midsommar. The threat of woodland savages doesn’t scare us anymore, but perhaps folklore does. The film opens up once we’re in the world of The Foundation. In one particularly gruesome scene, we’re taken through a cave of trespassers, all of their eyes burned out of their sockets. We’re also following Jen’s father, Scott (Matthew Modine, in silver fox mode) on his journey into The Foundation to track down Jen. The film’s latter half gives a lot more for our final girl to do. We can see how The Foundation has changed her, particularly the influence of the hypnotic Venable. Wrong Turn also holds one of the most memorable credits scenes of recent memory as “This Land is Your Land” plays (sung by Modine’s daughter, Ruby Modine). Arguably, Wrong Turn’s last half and its final moments redeem its flat and labored first-half.