Friends hiking the Appalachian Trail are confronted by ‘The Foundation,’ a community of people who have lived in the mountains for hundreds of years.
As a horror aficionado and someone who has been watching and enjoying horror films since I was 10 years old, I never saw the original “Wrong Turn,” nor the plenitude of sequels and prequels that came after it. I watched part of the original but found myself bored at yet another movie about a group of kids who go camping in the middle of nowhere and get attacked by cannibalistic inbreds. I’d seen it all before in films such as “Deliverance,” “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” “The Hills Have Eyes,” and “Cabin Fever,” and the original “Wrong Turn” just never grabbed my attention. This updated reboot thankfully gets rid of the inbred cannibals and substitutes it with something a little more believable and authentic, within the confines of this story anyway.
A group of six friends, Jen and her boyfriend Darius (Charlotte Vega and Adain Bradley), Adam and his girlfriend Milla (Dylan McTee and Emma Dumont), and Gary and his boyfriend Luis (Vardaan Arora and Adrian Favela), descend on a small West Virginia town with the intent of hiking the Appalachian Trail. Before they head out, they are informed by a local to “keep to the marked trail, the land here can be unforgiving.” Undeterred, they take off the next morning and are overwhelmed by the Trail’s beautiful and rugged landscape. As they venture further into the mountains, they deviate from the trail and shortly thereafter, realize they are lost, with none of their phones managing to acquire a signal. They decide on a direction and continue forward but then hear a thunderous sound and turn to see a large log barrelling down the hill towards them. All but five of them survive, with Gary being crushed to death against a tree. With a storm fast approaching, they set up camp, and the next morning, they discover Milla is missing.
Trying to locate her, they get separated and Adam gets caught in a trap that drags him underground. As the remaining friends search desperately for him, they stumble upon two large men, dressed in camouflage and animal skulls who are carrying Adam, who is unconscious. They attack the two men, assuming they are killers and Adam regains consciousness and beats one of them to death with a tree branch. Soon thereafter, they locate Milla and then realize they are being followed. As they try to outrun them, Milla falls into a trapping pit filled with spikes. Unaware of her fall, the remaining friends keep running and Milla is killed with an arrow to the head by a masked stranger. The friends are then captured and knocked unconscious. Upon waking, they are brought to an undisclosed location somewhere on the mountain, and it is revealed to them that the people who live there are called The Foundation. These people have lived peacefully inside their community and have killed any outsiders who have tried to disrupt their way of life.
Because Adam killed one of their own, The Foundation sentences him to death, slaying him with the same tree branch, and the remaining trio of Jen, Darius, and Luis, are sentenced to eternal darkness, where their eyes will be burned from their heads with a red-hot poker and left to fend for themselves in a pit deep underground. Luis is the first to succumb to the grisly punishment but before Jen and Darius fall victim to their disciplinary action, Jen pleads for their lives, stating that Darius is a strong worker that could contribute to their community and offers herself to the group, stating that she is strong and could be a good wife and mother to whoever would take her. The leader of The Foundation, Venable (Bill Sage), agrees to take her as his wife and they are spared from their sentencing.
Meanwhile, Jen’s father Scott (Matthew Modine), not having heard from her in over six weeks, knows something is wrong and follows her to the town where she last called him from. Staying at the same inn, he makes friends with the Innkeeper, Aileen (Amy Warner), who remembers Jen. She tells Scott about The Foundation and that most people just laugh it off as a silly ghost story but he is desperate to locate his daughter and decides to head up the mountain to try and rescue her himself. He is eventually captured by The Foundation and when he sees Jen and Darius, they are stone-faced and unresponsive when he calls out to them, seemingly having been brainwashed. Venable states that Scott will be killed at dawn for trespassing on their property and he is dumped in a pit but later that night, Jen breaks him out, stating that she has been planning her escape all this time and was waiting for the right moment. Just as they are about to leave, Venable and his men come after them and Jen and Scott must navigate the dark and treacherous woods, filled with The Foundation’s deadly booby traps if they are to make it back to civilization safely.
This updated version of “Wrong Turn” works so much better now that the clichéd inbred cannibals have been removed. The film’s new threat, The Foundation, is a scary group of people who talk about living a quiet, peaceful life, away from the cruel and remorseless world that exists outside of their front door but they can be just as ruthless and vicious as those they take a dim view of. Our protagonist, Jen, is played with tenacity and a fiery resolve by Charlotte Vega, who is remindful of Florence Pugh in Ari Aster’s “Midsommar,” a film that incorporates a storyline similar to this one. Matthew Modine is equally as good as her relentless father, ready to lay his life on the line to rescue her, and the rest of the cast are good in their respective roles. Cinematographer Nick Junkersfeld delivers beautiful, crisp, widescreen images that hearken back to the likes of Dean Cundey and Douglas Slocombe in their prime throughout the ’70s and ’80s, thankfully utilizing steady, smooth camera movements as opposed to the dreaded shakycam that seems to infiltrate most horror films today. Director Mike P. Nelson delivers a fresh and, to be honest, welcome take on a tired and fatigued genre, infusing it with genuine scares and some disturbing and gruesome moments of barbarity. Everything you could want in a horror movie.
Now available on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital) and DVD
