2021's Wrong Turn is a confused horror entry in a long-running franchise. The Wrong Turn franchise -- consisting of six prior films -- is basically the lowbrow equivalent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. If you liked those, you may enjoy this series as long you don't mind a cheaper copy of those horror classics. If not, the franchise as a collective won't do much for you.
The problem is that the Wrong Turn franchise has always been following the leader, and it's known for one thing: killer cannibals attacking people who end up stuck in the wilderness. The trick is how those people get in the cannibals' territory, but in the end, it doesn't matter, making these the kind of fun films you'd watch with friends over drinks on the SyFy channel.
The new film starts with a father going to a small town outside the Appalachian Mountains, looking for his missing child and her friends. Cut to six weeks earlier, where audience already knows where the general plot will go. Kids enter the town, which offers many cryptic warnings that the cast inevitably ignores, and they ultimately stumble onto a cultish-society who regularly slaughters everyone who walks into their area.
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This time, however, there are no inbred cannibals, as seen in prior Wrong Turn films. Instead, the seventh film features a Druidic tribe known as the Foundation. The teens intersect with these deer-skull, fur-covered hunters, resulting in a film that takes an abrupt and bizarre turn halfway through. At nearly two hours long, this film is by far the longest film in the franchise, and it overstays its welcome at the 70-minute mark, with the entire third act focusing on the father character looking for his daughter.
Wrong Turn is ultimately a very serviceable entry in the franchise, even if it feels at times unlike the rest of the property. The film is visually great and unsettling, especially in regards to the location and the Foundation, as they resemble something out of Skyrim with their animal skins and skulls.
The violence is also brutal at times. While not as over-the-top as earlier entries in the series, there are some fairly cruel and unusual deaths. Most of the gore is shown via cut-aways, but we see skulls get crushed, bodies impaled, eyes burned out and cannibalism, delivering on the violence when the plot and characters are lacking.
All 2021's Wrong Turn needs to do is satisfy the itch by copying past horror tropes, like it's done before, but Wrong Turn tries to bring the 2003 original into the 2020s by changing the formula. It attempts to add the political text seen in popular films like The Purge. Instead of a family of inbred mutants, the Foundation is a functioning civilization. Meanwhile, the victims are meant to represent a diverse, Millennial/Gen Z audience, with even an old redneck getting "put in his place." These incredibly privileged entrepreneurs establish that they aren't soft-handed babies, but the film's action says otherwise.
Politics and horror go hand-in-hand, as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a highly political film, as is The Hills Have Eye. The problem is that Wrong Turn's director Mike P. Nelson and writer Alan B. McElroy try to do The Purge without understanding how that film franchise used its every aspect to create social satire. Wrong Turn takes an easier, cheaper route to political commentary, and, in doing so, it's cringy.
There are scenes where the film takes an abrupt stop when characters argue with each other like they would on Twitter. Furthermore, it's often the white characters talking over the underrepresented characters. In fact, most of what happens to these characters in this film is a result of the white characters' actions, and as the film goes on, the underrepresented characters are given proportionately less to say.
The film really tries to show how diverse it is without ever giving these underrepresented characters a role in the story. Three characters in the main group are people of color, two of whom are gay and in interracial relationships. However, none of these characters contribute anything to the plot and lack any real discernable characterization, with their fates ultimately decided by the white female lead. They have no agency, which makes their inclusion more infuriating.
Wrong Turn's problems become immediately apparent in its second half, where it becomes an overly-long mess of brave creative choices that simply do not pan out. Wrong Turn is an ambitious film in that it really tries to reach for some big ideas and themes. The problem is that the film doesn't successfully relay those themes through the narrative. We are told what the film is about and what we are supposed to learn, only for that message to be brutally contradicted two scenes later.
The film, especially in its second half, tries to engage with some very complex and nuanced themes. However, the events of the film and the actions of its characters are at complete odds with the various themes it's trying to relay. The film thematically wants to showcase a message about not judging a situation based on its appearances, yet it constantly undercuts this message after hammering in this point.
The film's message is contradicted by the action. It also doesn't help that people eager for Wrong Turn's violence end up being lectured to by the villains of the film for wanting classic horror tropes and slashers. In short, Wrong Turn is a confused film at war with itself.
Directed by Mike P. Nelson and written by Alan B. McElroy, Wrong Turn stars Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, Bill Sage, Emma Dumont, Dylan McTee, Daisy Head and Matthew Modine. The film is now available on VOD.
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