‘They said they would be the foundation on which a new nation would be built...’
I love a horror franchise. More than I love a freshly washed pair of pyjamas and slightly less than I love Coco Pops. And yet, the Wrong Turn franchise has completely passed me by. I saw the original back in 2003 and my abiding memory of that experience is that Wrong Turn isn’t Wolf Creek – a vastly superior film that dropped a couple of years later. As a result of this, Wrong Turn and its subsequent five (!) sequels have never entered my cinematic landscape. Perhaps a nice reboot would be the thing that allowed me to let this weird little franchise into my life…
When three young couples go missing while attempting to hike through the Appalachian Trail, one girl’s father (Matthew Modine) shows up at nearby town and starts harassing the locals. All of whom respond in kind. Mainly by glaring, spitting or taking a defiant swig from their beer. It soon transpires that the missing hikers have found more than they bargained for when searching for an old Civil War site. Just like when I went hiking and slipped on the carcass of a rotting sheep. Happy Halloween.
As previously stated, I can’t really remember much about the original movie other than a vague resemblance to horror classic The Hills Have Eyes. The sequel dispenses with grotesque mutants hiding in the mountains and instead replaces them with highly resourceful land dwellers who all boast a full set of teeth. This is a refreshing take on mountain folk and marks a welcome resistance to all of those films cowering in the considerable shadow of Deliverance.
Instead of disfigured crazies, the protagonists descend upon a patriotic cult called The Foundation who spend their days being self-sufficient and living off the land. They are responsible for the occasional act of ultra-violence of course and they do keep a horde of eyeless, starving souls in an old cave somewhere, but no society is perfect. Just look at the tuna in Subway sandwiches for chrissakes. Who are the real monsters?
In the end, Wrong Turn perhaps bites off more than it can chew, and the sequel-baiting ending doesn’t really fit with the rest of the movie, but anyone looking for some cheap and nasty Halloween scares could do a lot worse than taking a Wrong Turn into the mountains.