Wrong Turn (2021) Movie Review

Wrong Turn – Bloody, Disturbing and Horrific

Director: Mike P Nelson

Writer: Alan B McElroy (Screenplay)

Starring: Matthew Modine, Emma Dumont, Charlotte Vega, Daisy Head, Bill Sage, Valerie Jane Parker, Adrian Favela, Dylan McTee, Adain Bradley, Vardaan Arora

Plot: Friends hiking the Appalachian Trail are confronted by ‘The Foundation’, a community of people who have lived in the mountains for hundreds of years.

Tagline – This land is their land

Runtime: 1 Hour 49 Minutes

There may be spoilers in the rest of the review

Story: Wrong Turn starts as a group of friends Jen (Vega), Milla (Dumont), Gary (Arora), Darius (Bradley), Adam (McTee), Luis (Favela) who are looking to hike the Appalachian Trail, with Jen keeping her father Scott (Modine) updated on her journey.

The friends decide to leave the trail in search of their own adventure, which will lead to disaster, leading to one in the group dying, but this is just the beginning of their nightmare, when they learn who is really living off the trail in the woodland area.

Thoughts on Wrong Turn

Characters & Performances – Scott is the father of Jen’s he hasn’t heard from her, which will see him heading into the woods in search of her. He knows his relationship with her has been strained, but like any father he will drop everything to search for when she goes missing. Matthew Modine does a give us a great look at a concerned father that might well be getting in over his head. Jen is one of the six friends, she is somebody who can think quick on her feet and uses this to help keep herself alive once she is captured. Jen is a very strong character, a fighter and one that will always be thinking fast. Charlotte Vega does a wonderful putting her name up there as a potential new horror lead for years to come. Jon Venable is the leader of the people living in the woods, he is judge, jury and executions if people break the laws, having everyone in his group doing whatever he says. Bill Sage brings this dominating, calm, controlling leader to life in what is a truly engaging and frightening villain. We do have a strong supporting set of characters even if most are here for disposable reason, which cover up the weaknesses in Jen’s friends, as well as the pure scale of the community.

Story – The story here follows a group of six friends that are taking a hike along the Appalachian Trail when they leave the trail and find themselves facing a group of people living in the woods, a group that won’t let people just walk away. When we go into this film we are going to be waiting for a certain storyline, one we have seen before. Wrong Turn takes a different direction, bringing us an original twist to going off the trail, it does bring a new level of horror to the story, one that will offer bigger questions, despite falling into the ‘they are evil’ group. We really had a chance to play along the fence here, where they could just be nice people living in the woods, but no, it is instantly evil. This is the longest movie in the Wrong Turn world, it uses the time well, giving us a more flushed out story, even get to poke a bit of fun of the original franchise.

Themes – Wrong Turn is a horror thriller that follows everything we would expect from a film titled Wrong Turn, taking us in the deep woods where the group meets a community that has strict rules. This will give us plenty of bloody, gory kills, they don’t hold back, they introduce a place known as ‘The Dark’ which is horrific and when we see what is in it, it is even worse. One big thing to watch out for is the end credits, which might well be the most engaging credits sequences you will have seen.

Signature Entertainment presents Wrong Turn (2021) UK Home Premiere on Digital Platforms 26th February and Blu-Ray & DVD 3rd May

Wrong Turn is a breath of fresh air to a franchise which sadly, died, going in a bold new direction of terror.

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