'Wrong Turn' follows a group of 20-something-year-olds as they make their way through rural Virginia. After deciding to take on an adventure Jen, Darius, Milla, Adam, Gary and Luis make their way out in the wilderness and hike the Appalachian trail. The group soon stray from the trail and tragedy occurs as a tree trunk falls and rolls down the mountain, knocking out the party and crushing Gary.
Soon after the group encounter odd mountain-dwelling people and end up killing one of them in an act of self-defence and fear. The party is soon incapacitated and brought before a court held by the 'Foundation', a group established in the 1860's by people who believed the United States was on the brink of collapse, and sought refuge in the wilderness. The court finds them guilty of murder and bearing false witness. Venable, the chieftain of the settlers proceeds to bludgeon Adam to death and sentences Jen, Darius and Luis to 'darkness'. Jen and Darius escape the punishment and are allowed to assimilate to the community.
At the same time, Jen's father Scott, worried about not hearing from Jen ventures out to find her. Being warned by the locals to not go searching for her, he goes anyway and is eventually ambushed and captured by the settlers. With Scott captured, Jen decides to make a run for it. Asking Darius to leave with them, he decides to stay with the community. As they make their escape, the local townsfolk come to Jen and Scott's rescue and help lead them out of the woods.
Some time later Jen and Scott are back home, seemingly having resumed their lives. On visiting with her step-mother, Jen encounters Venable, who asks her to return to the community with him. The credits start to roll as they drive off, only for the vehicle to swerve and crash, showing Jen kill Venable an the other cultists, with her eventually walking back home.
'Wrong Turn' is a reboot of the early 2000's slasher franchise. Without having seen the previous iterations, the film does not raise any unique characteristics or manage to distinguish itself as a memorable film, prompting to raise questions towards the reason for producing the film in the first place. The 'trapped in the woods' and 'chased by the local inhabitants' motifs have been explored to great lengths in multiple other films, and 'Wrong Turn' seems to add nothing new to the sub-genre.
The film suffers from an overly elaborate and contrived plot, stretching the films runtime to almost two hours, yet spending little time exploring it's characters and their goals, aims and aspirations. Each individual is given a vague reference towards their character, but it is severely limited to a clichéd imitation of a personality, boiled down to singular tag-lines to seemingly represent the more common modern interpretations of the young adult. For example, the group are by and large open-minded, taking a broad approach to condemning the sordid past of the state that they are in. As the characters are picked off one by one, it is difficult to recall specific distinguishing features to describe them and therefore do little to facilitate sympathy or shock for their passing besides the brutal manner in which it occurs.
The film picks up on various thematic threads, a number of which it seems to forget about during the course of the movie and leaves unexplored. Early on, the group discuss and are worried about issues of racism and homophobia, leading into adding suspense to the story. However, these issues are soon forgotten about when seemingly all the tension that could be derived from it is exhausted, and the characters move away from the unwelcoming locals, never bringing up the themes again.
Further, 'Wrong Turn' seemingly jumps from one theme to another without spending enough time on any single idea to explore it enough to raise any meaningful resolution. As such, after Gary is crushed by the rolling log, Luis and the others are showed grieving, with Luis expressing anger in a scene afterwards. However, with everything that the group have to deal with, grief is left by the wayside and never touched on again. The same happens when the group are in discussion about morality and ethics after having killed one of the settlers. They hold a short exchange about the basic concept of justice, but provide little information that could colour our opinion of any single individual in the group. Additionally, towards the end of the film, Jen has a short exchange with Darius, as he informs her of his decision to remain with the community. Seeing as how we have learned little about him, the decision does not evoke strong feelings one way or the other, as Darius' motivations are alien to us. All of the unexplored themes is a testament to the writers efforts to cram in as much as possible into the film, seemingly touching on a number of topics, yet failing to explore any one of them fully, resulting in an overstuffed and confused final product.
A number of minute plot-holes also plague the film and detract from the story, such as the unexplained reason for the groups missing cellphones, the experienced hunter helping Scott track Jen dying almost instantly on tracking in the forest and the fact that the townsfolk were able to find Jen and Scott in the middle of the night in the middle of a forest just as they were making their escape from the compound without any prior communication about it.
The cast of actors for the film seemingly do the best they can with what they are given, yet there is little focus on a single player to provide a satisfying and complete arc. Even though Jen, played by Charlotte Vega, may be the individual we spend the most time with, her storyline lacks a foundation that can be built on through the film and therefore provides a generic hero to follow, without establishing a strong connection that could allow the viewer to sympathise with her.
'Wrong Turn' does provide a number of effective jump-scares, and manages to create an atmospheric sense of dread a couple of times through its runtime. However, the film suffers from a number of scenes set and shot during the daytime, completely removing the element of suspense and creating an awkward and strange series of scenes as the group are being chased by the settlers. The greatest limitation to the 'Wrong Turn' seems to be in the overall composition of the feature, - with an overcomplicated plot and a number of unnecessary themes, the film seems to run out of steam during it's second act and does not manage to return to its previous levels of horror and suspense, resulting in a disappointing and overlong film.
Score: 1/4
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