Wrong Turn (2021)
Last Watch Date - September 11, 2022
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
I've already noted how surprised I was by Wrong Turn (2003) initially and how I still enjoy watching it. I knew this was a reboot and not a remake going in, but I also wanted to read as little as possible about it so I could embrace the uncertainty. Had I read anything about it, I would've very quickly seen how mixed the reviews were and thought "maybe this won't be good."
But I'm a fool. Gone are the inbred hillibillies. Gone are the interesting kills and sense of action/horror. Instead, we get a sort of semi-horror movie - which is only horror because of some of the graphic kills to be fully transparent. It's a sort of thriller/drama with enough horror elements to give it "horror" as a genre. It is NOT scary, tense, or fun. There was a sense of "anything can happen" from the original that is gone.
Let's talk about the characters, shall we? We have some pretty bad acting here which is par for the horror course, but you also have Matthew Modine. Why is he in this movie? The "local yokels" are so, so bad. Not merely their terrible acting, but their paper-thin, stereotype-loaded depictions set the whole "urban vs rural" divide back a few thousand decades. I get it, the rural people are dumb and insular. The city kids are progressive and have awesome ideas! So much so that the main character can talk her way out of dangerous situations with her amazing intellect. But those savages in town? They use their fists to solve problems. And alcohol too, obviously.
The plot in this movie is stupid. Even stupider than a group of chuckleheads running into a family of inbred cannibals. Yes, it's worse. It's also almost like two distinct plots that are tied together with the main character and her dad. It starts with him, moves to her, moves back to him, then they join their stories together for the final section. I'm really trying not to give any spoiler here, so I can't go into further detail. Neither of their stories are compelling, nor are they tense, scary, or suspenseful. What you end up with is two bad mini-movies stitched together into a long, boring, dull reboot.
The guy who wrote the original Wrong Turn wrote this movie. Is this not one of those cases of someone not knowing what they had and going back to ruin it? At least George Lucas just CGI'd some shitty stuff into his Star Wars movies. The equivalent here would be if Lucas went back and rewrote Star Wars into a story about a young guy who couldn't figure out if he wanted to follow in his uncle's footsteps or not, so he went on a hike in the swamps where Yoda lives and didn't fuck his sister. Instead, he'd fuck Han Solo and become the proprietor of a BDSM club that welcomes creatures from all over the galaxy. Jabba the Hut could be his bartender in this version. And you'd be like "what the fuck is this shit?" Which is how I feel after watching this reboot.
Recommended?
Nope.
