‘Wrong Turn(2021)’ Review – A Surprisingly Good Remake

To say that remakes suck is very easy to say. There are plenty of examples to show just how classics should not be touched. Remakes have their place in the world of film though, and help new people discover films they never knew existed. Then a movie comes along like Wrong Turn that makes the brave step of being different and being surprisingly good.

A group of friends hiking on the Appalachian Trail take a wrong turn and find themselves in trouble. A few week later one of the friend’s fathers takes the same trail to find out what happened to her.

My synopsis of the film is brief and not highly informative for a point, and that is that this is a movie you really need to go into cold. If you are a fan of the original Wrong Turn (me being one of them) it is easy to watch this thinking that it cannot beat the original, why was this even made? The answer is, that it sits next to the original as something truly different, while still taking the foundation of what made the original great, just changing things up.

Jen (Charlotte Vega) is arguably the main character in the film, as well as her father Scott (Matthew Modine). The idea of a group of city dwellers heading into the mountains and taking a wrong turn is something that we have seen plenty of times, especially in the original. The beauty of this version is though, do not expect the same Wrong Turn to be taken. If anything, the audience’s expectations of what they will see is one of the biggest Wrong Turns.

What I will say is that this version of Wrong Turn is not as fun as the original, that movie was a full of slasher style horror with plenty of blood guts and gore. It bred a whole slew of sequels that while may not have been as good (though the second was the best of them) and had plenty of success. This version of Wrong Turn if anything is a bit more of a modernisation of the theme, it is arguable too that it taps into a more intellectual type of horror that hits on the themes of movies like Deliverance and tips things on its head.

What I really like about Wrong Turn is the fact that it is a good horror film that can’t really be compared to the original. It stands next to it, though to me I will say the original still stands up as the best. With this version though, it feels fresh, it feels new, and is like a breath of fresh air to the never-ending slew or remakes we see.

Wrong Turn (2021) is available on demand now, and on Blu-Ray & DVD 3rd May

Rating 4/5

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