Watched the 2021 reboot of "Wrong Turn." Gotta say, I like it - which is surprising since I'm not a big fan of the original or its brood of direct-to-video children.
The first film follows a group of carefree, young, and attractive kids who are hunted by inbred mutant cannibals in West Virginia. In true teen-slasher fashion, the sin-factor determines the order of slayings with the horny weed-smokers getting knocked off first. The flick has a couple decent scares, but is mostly an excuse to watch people get hacked to bits by hicks. And that's fine. I have my blood-and-guts days.
This new flick elevates the story from slasher to cult horror. Gone are the inbred cannibals and simplistic predator-pray dynamics, replaced by an intentional society of forest-dwelling Democratic socialists aka "The Foundation." Camouflaged in copious amounts of animal skins/skulls and moss, the Foundation has lived as a secluded civilization in the Appalachian Mountains since the 1800s ... and they don't take kindly to strangers. In fact, they've laid an impressive assortment of booby traps across the mountain to capture/kill trespassing outsiders (everything from massive rolling logs, to tiger pits lined with punji sticks and venomous snakes, to spiked maces and sharpened rock slabs that drop from the tree canopy). The traps make for some head-smashing good fun, while establishing an ever-present sense of anxiety. This is bolstered by the director's clever use of a muted color palette, which directs our attention to small details in the woods (like trees with eyeballs) that suggest our hipster interlopers are under constant surveillance by an unseen, nearby presence.
What's interesting about this flick is it doesn't have a clear-cut bad guy/girl. Everybody (the kids, small-town locals, Foundation members) is painted as flawed with redeeming qualities. While this approach doesn't stand up to serious scrutiny, it still makes for an interesting movie-going experience that leaves you with a simple yet important message: Don't judge a book by its animal skins.
The first film follows a group of carefree, young, and attractive kids who are hunted by inbred mutant cannibals in West Virginia. In true teen-slasher fashion, the sin-factor determines the order of slayings with the horny weed-smokers getting knocked off first. The flick has a couple decent scares, but is mostly an excuse to watch people get hacked to bits by hicks. And that's fine. I have my blood-and-guts days.
This new flick elevates the story from slasher to cult horror. Gone are the inbred cannibals and simplistic predator-pray dynamics, replaced by an intentional society of forest-dwelling Democratic socialists aka "The Foundation." Camouflaged in copious amounts of animal skins/skulls and moss, the Foundation has lived as a secluded civilization in the Appalachian Mountains since the 1800s ... and they don't take kindly to strangers. In fact, they've laid an impressive assortment of booby traps across the mountain to capture/kill trespassing outsiders (everything from massive rolling logs, to tiger pits lined with punji sticks and venomous snakes, to spiked maces and sharpened rock slabs that drop from the tree canopy). The traps make for some head-smashing good fun, while establishing an ever-present sense of anxiety. This is bolstered by the director's clever use of a muted color palette, which directs our attention to small details in the woods (like trees with eyeballs) that suggest our hipster interlopers are under constant surveillance by an unseen, nearby presence.
What's interesting about this flick is it doesn't have a clear-cut bad guy/girl. Everybody (the kids, small-town locals, Foundation members) is painted as flawed with redeeming qualities. While this approach doesn't stand up to serious scrutiny, it still makes for an interesting movie-going experience that leaves you with a simple yet important message: Don't judge a book by its animal skins.