Entertainment
Prime Videos’s Hit Thriller Quietly Changed a 23-Year-Old Franchise’s Formula
Currently climbing the Prime Video streaming charts is the simply titled horror-thriller Wrong Turn. Ostensibly a straight slasher flick from the description and poster art, it actually takes more risks than one may expect, with multiple twists and an end credits sequence that’s an essential part of the film. However, despite the growing number of eyes on it, many viewers may miss the fact that Mike P. Nelson’s gruesome 2021 blend of folk horror and cult thriller is actually a complete reinvention of a slasher series that dates all the way back to 2003.
Wrong Turn (2003) was a modest hit in theaters, earning $29 million, but really took on a life of its own on home media, where its throwback The Hills Have Eyes–style inbred splatter thrills found a new generation of fans — and spawned a seven-film series. Viewers taken by the bloody thrills of the 2021 film should absolutely see where the series began — and can, today, with it streaming free over on Plex.
The Original ‘Wrong Turn’ Is a Very Different Kind of Horror Film
Director Rob Schmidt’s 2003 slasher is part of the early 2000s studio-horror period when, for a time, it seemed like 1980s-style gore-for-gore’s-sake was making a comeback. And coming out the same year as Platinum Dunes’ stylish, grisly Texas Chain Saw Massacre remake and a year before Saw kicked off the so-called “torture porn” era, Wrong Turn itself was a throwback to an even less reputable slasher subgenre: inbred backwoods killers.
Drawing on imagery from classics like The Final Terror, Deliverance, and Just Before Dawn, Schmidt made no bones about the film’s objective: throw a group of attractive, naive city-dwellers into the mountains of West Virginia, and have most of them graphically slaughtered by cackling maniacs. Wrong Turn had an ace up its sleeve, however, with its gruesome makeup and practical effects handled by the legendary Stan Winston (who also executive produced).
Winston’s genius work, even on a tight budget, results in a gritty physicality and thickness in the film’s gore sequences. Most memorable is a “half-decapitation” with the top of a woman’s head balancing on an axe embedded in a tree, while her body falls. Winston partner Shane Mahan explained in a Winston School video that budgetary limitations forced the FX whizzes to go back to the drawing board from animatronics and draw on a far simpler whip-pan technique popularized by James Cameron to get the gruesome scene looking just right. Everything from the makeup of the mountain men to the death scenes oozes with craft and care — something today’s CGI-laden action and horror distinctly lacks.
‘Wrong Turn’ 2021 Is a Fresh Take on Backwoods Horror
With original creator Alan McElroy returning to write, the 2021 film starts off with a good old bait-and-switch, lulling audiences into believing they’re about to get more of the same backwoods mutant mayhem. A mid-film twist, however, takes things to a darker, slightly more believable and contemporary place, as Jen (Charlotte Vega) and her friends find themselves captured by mask-wearing cultists who have created their own twisted utopia in the woods.
The film doesn’t skimp on the gore (highlights include a character blinded by a hot poker and a skull-crushing), but notably focuses more on tension, believable characters, and the growing horror of a desperate situation. And even more surprisingly, the film shifts gears yet again to focus on Matthew Modine, playing Jen’s father, as he searches for his missing daughter. What he finds, and where the film goes from there, deserve to be left unspoiled, but Wrong Turn (2021) does not skimp on surprises or macabre subject matter.
With the reboot performing so well on streaming, it would make sense if a sequel were in the works, but so far, nothing has been announced. However, Wrong Turn (2021) deserves credit as a complete, bold overhaul of a successful franchise — and one made by its original creator, no less. It’s a tense, professionally mounted thriller that takes a stab at a slightly more mainstream audience, while leaving none of its twisted roots behind. And over on Plex, the original splatter classic is still available to stream for free.
- Release Date
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February 26, 2021
- Runtime
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84 minutes
- Director
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Mike P. Nelson
- Writers
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Alan B. McElroy
- Producers
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Aaron Ryder, Brian J. Gilbert, Don Carmody, Erik Feig, Patrick Wachsberger, Robert Kulzer, Stan Winston, Sven Ebeling, Hagen Behring
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Charlotte Vega
Chris Flynn
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Adain Bradley
Jessie Burlingame
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