Remake alert! Wait, whoa. I was not prepared for this one. I really liked the original Wrong Turn back in 2003. It came out of nowhere and was kind of a spiritual sister to Deliverance. Plus, Eliza Dushku is awesome.

Given that my expectations were so low, this new one ended up being rather enjoyable, specifically because it doesn’t try to do a beat-by-beat remake.

The story starts with a father (Matthew Modine) in search of his daughter (Charlotte Vega) who went missing on a hiking trip in backwoods Virginia. After a little bit of setup, the narrative shifts to the daughter, Jen, and her five friends setting out on their trip six weeks prior to the dad’s search. The group starts their hike and loses their way when searching for some old military fort. Things turn bad when a rolling log trap takes out one of the group members and mildly injures the rest of them.

Things go from bad to worse as they can’t find their way back and encounter other traps and eventually are taken as prisoners by a strange tribe that have lived off the grid for what appears to be a century. The dad shows up to rescue Jen, but things are never that easy. I’ll keep from spoiling the rest.

The movie is not without flaws for sure, but it was wickedly engaging, had some tense moments, and went in some fresh directions. The gore was a tad lacking at times as it seemed like a lot of scenes were cut right when something gross was happening.

I’m happy they moved away from the cannibalistic inbred monsters and tried a different approach. There were four sequels after Wrong Turn 2: Dead End that sucked the big one, so it is nice that the franchise has returned to some sane storytelling again.

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