Story: Jennifer (Charlotte Vega) is on an epic road trip with her friends, exploring the vast, natural wonder of the Appalachian Trail. The excursion is an extensive one, but she has her besties and promises to check in with her father, Scott (Matthew Modine) at every stop. The trip starts off well, with beautiful landscapes to soak in and all the hiking, exploring, and natural splendor the friends could desire, though the locals aren’t friendly to outsiders. Some of the locals are just cautious, reminding the group not to veer off the trails or go off on their own, though some prove to be more of an aggressive problem, like the band of hayseeds at a rundown bar. After a frightening encounter with the local drunks, the friends soon back out into the deep woods to get in touch with nature again. But are the stories of lurking dangers in the woods true or just folktales and if true, what awaits the friends on their journey?

Entertainment Value: The Wrong Turn franchise wasn’t stacked with classic horror volumes, but it did have a vibe of its own and usually, some memorable gore based set pieces. This remake has neither of those positive traits and instead, is a dull and forgettable horror picture that moves about as swiftly as a snail in molasses. I don’t need a lightning fast pace in every movie, but Wrong Turn is not just slow, but the kind of slow where nothing happens. The pace doesn’t slow in order to further the narrative or fill in little logic gaps, instead it simply rolls at this glacial step and never seems to find any momentum, so the entire experience just drags. The production values look cheap, like the film was shot on a low rent theme park, which means the creepy, deep in the woods atmosphere this kind of movie needs, is nowhere to be found here. I wanted to like Wrong Turn, as I enjoy these kind of hicksploitation horror entries usually, but this was a total dud that I just can’t recommend.

No nakedness. As I mentioned above, the original Wrong Turn series was known for bloodshed, with most of the movies having at least one creative calling card of gore. No such luck here. The remake opts to have nearly all of the violence happen off screen. So while the kills have cool setups in some cases, we don’t get to see the actual impact, which is a let down. There are a couple knife attacks that yield some decent red stuff, but that’s about the extent of it here. You do see the aftermath of some of the kills and that can include some visuals of gore, but it is passive, not kinetic. The dialogue is bland and the acting falls in line with that, an assortment of forgettable lines and performances. Matthew Modine tries, but the rest of the cast just phones it in and that isn’t all on them either, as the script gives them little to nothing to work with here. On the craziness scale, this one is low on fun, but Modine reminded me of Tim Thomerson, which added a few seconds of a smile. I also appreciated how the natural end point was ignored, only to have this rattletrap limp forward, skip another natural end point, then hobble toward a weak, unsatisfying conclusion. In other words, the needle doesn’t move much on any front here, a dud from start to finish.

Nudity: 0/10

Blood: 2/10

Dialogue: 0/10

Overall Insanity: 0/10

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