A spin-off in name only, Wrong Turn (2021), from relative newcomer director Mike P. Nelson, takes the cult inbred-cannibal horror franchise in a totally new direction, pivoting away from the signature cornerstones of the slasher series towards something just as unflinching, addictive, and brutal but one that’s meant to be taken more seriously. And with no apparent cannibalism.

The seventh film in the series created by Alan B. McElroy, this new iteration of Wrong Turn is a top-down reinvention that abandons perhaps the most defining feature of the series in an effort to revitalize the franchise, starting from scratch with a whole new set of characters, circumstances, and carnivorous appetites. Whereas hopes to reboot long-running horror series more often than not fails miserably, Nelson’s Wrong Turn makes all the right moves by deconstructing the genre and really narrowing in on what makes horror writ large and this particular franchise so endlessly enjoyable.

First of all, you have plenty of gruesome kills. Wrong Turn makes no excuses for the series’ barbarism nor does it want to turn its back on the schlocky appeals of such, displaying early on its gnarly bloodlust, complete with some stomach-churning practical effects that show this new version will cut no corners when it comes to killing and feature no shortage of viscera. And while the plot of the movie can be pretty easily broken down into a series of genre clichés, the way that McElroy – who wrote the script – is able to plot out a roadmap that feels both familiar and yet unstoppably fun is worth celebrating. There are many junctions where things could have reached a natural conclusion that would have been fine, or just good enough, but McElroy just keeps pushing things further, continuing to dial the craziness all the way up past the breaking point, right up until the final frame of the movie.

It all begins when Jen (Charlotte Vega) and friends Darius (Adian Bradley), Adam (Dylan McTee), Milla (Emma Dumont), Luis (Adrian Favela), and Gary (Vardaan Arora) decide to ignore the advice of the backwoods locals and take a little detour while hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail. They soon find themselves lost and injured and a series of poor decisions leave them engulfed in a fight for their lives against “The Foundation”, a fringe separatist community that has been living far from the spying eye of modern society for hundreds of years.

Led by Bill Sage’s John Venable (a truly great and legitimately terrifying villain), The Foundation proves just as threatening and disturbing an adversary as the original series’ Three Finger and Co. but for entirely different reasons. In a subversion of how these things usually go, McElroy fills Wrong Turn with red herrings and clever turns. Longtime fans of the series may find the plot a bit too unmoored from that of the original though tough they will find plenty of nods and throwbacks to it in the form of woodland traps and some POV camerawork that function as clear visual references to its root.

While we start with some pretty standard teens in the woods getting picked off one by one, Wrong Turn makes some dramatic tonal and plot shifts that touch on many different sub-genres of horror: there’s splashes of Deliverance, The Village, The Descent, and even The Hunger Games and the way that they are all jammed into a blender and mixed to perfection is particularly fun to watch unfold. In an effort to transcend the material, McElroy allows the world to feel ever-expansive, with a level of world-building that’s truly impressive and more than accounts for the nearly two-hour runtime. Though the fanfare for upscale, boutique “elevated horror” is at an all-time high, Wrong Turn proves that good ole reliable slasher-horror schlock can be just as entertaining, arguably even moreso.

CONCLUSION: ‘Wrong Turn’ breaks the mold of lame slasher reboots to deliver an unexpectedly awesome road trip into gnarly backwoods insanity. Though a near-complete rebranding of the franchise, the film from director Mike P. Nelson proves there is plenty of gas left in this series’ tank.