Based on the 2003 film of the same name, Wrong Turn is a horror film that tells the story about a group of friends that go on a hiking trip in the woods and where things begin to go horribly wrong.
Jen (Charlotte Vega) and four of her friends go on a hiking holiday in a small town in middle America but during the hike Jen’s boyfriend Darius (Adain Bailey) decides to go off the trail and into the woods. The group of friends will come across various booby traps while they are in the woods and have to try and survive without being caught or killed. Things go from bad to worse when they finally find out who exactly has been leaving the booby traps in the woods. While this is all happening, Jen’s dad, Scott (Matthew Modine) becomes worried when Jen hasn’t been returning his calls and decides to go into the woods himself to try and find her.
Wrong Turn feels like two different films in one, which if executed well it can be a good thing, however, in this instance it just felt disjointed and unfocused. I quite enjoyed the first half of the film with the characters trying make it out of the woods by avoiding the traps, both for its intensity and excitement while not giving too much away. But the second half of the film slows down substantially and meanders on a lot without much story progress. I found this quite frustrating and disappointing as the first half of the film to be consistently paced and enjoyable.
I would have also liked to have seen more of Jen’s father because he is set up to be an important character, but in the end I don’t believe that he is used very well which is waste considering Matthew Modine delivered the best acting performance of the entire film. He was believable as a concerned father and him going into the woods to find Jen was one of the few highlights of the second half of the film. I would like to praise the make-up department for the detail that went into the death scenes, as they did contain some gore but they were never over-the-top.
Wrong Turn is a film that doesn’t seem to know what type of film it wants to be. It goes from being a horror film to an action film and had it been done right, it could have mixed the two styles together to make a good film. Unfortunately, they missed the mark and came up short this time.