Wrong Turn (2021)

At the last count, I think there were approximately twenty films in the Wrong Turn movie series. I could be misremembering, but I'm fairly sure that I'm correct. Every movie was pretty much the same; some inbred cannibals pick off numerous victims, often using some traps dotted around the vast woodlands they call home.

This Wrong Turn is a reboot written by the same writer of the original film, Alan B. McElroy, and there's enough here to keep horror fans happy. But there are also a couple of key points that may work against it. I'll come to those later.

Matthew Modine plays Scott Shaw, a father who arrives in a small town near the Appalachian Trail on a search for his daughter, who he hasn't heard from in about six weeks. Jumping back to six weeks previously, viewers are shown what happened to his daughter, Milla (Charlotte Vega), and the friends that she was travelling with. And what happened to them involved some woodland traps, an accident or two, and a self-sufficient community known as 'The Foundation', headed up by Venable (Bill Sage).

Directed by Mike P. Nelson, Wrong Turn is a well-balanced mix of nasty gore gags and attempts to be more seriously disturbing. Helped by McElroy's script, fans of the series will like the fact that they get something very much the same, but different. Traps are used, unwitting travellers are caught unawares, and the main villains are a very tight-knit "family". 

Vega is a decent lead, she's allowed to show some real strength in the moments that have her character doing whatever needs to be done as she keeps survival in her sights, but no other members of her troupe really stand out, unfortunately. Sage is an impressive head villain, always a threat and always seeming one step ahead of the protagonists. Modine does well with his supporting role, and gets more involved with the main events during the third act. The other main person to mention is Tim DeZarn, playing a local who may or may not be wishing misfortune upon the young travellers. 

And yet the small differences are enough to stop this from feeling in line with the pure horror entertainment vibe of the original movie. It may seem churlish, but the plotting here, the use of 'The Foundation' instead of those crazy cannibals, stops it from feeling like a Wrong Turn film. Although McElroy may have wanted to revisit his earlier work and rework it, perhaps it could have been better to just have it as a new, original(-ish) horror property. Although that would leave them unable to sell this as a recognisable brand name.

Overall, it's a decent film, especially if you don't pick apart all the holes in the logic of it. It's worth a watch. It just doesn't seem to fit alongside all of the other movies with Wrong Turn in the title.

6/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Shudder Saturday: The Pale Door (2020)

The sophomore directorial feature from director Aaron B. Koontz, who has spent some time honing his craft with numerous shorts, including his segments in the mixed bag horror comedy anthology that is Scare Package, The Pale Door has a number of big names attached to draw horror movie fans to it. From producer Joe R. Lansdale to cast members Pat Healy and Noah Segan, there are plenty of names to prick up your ears. But try to ignore your ears.  This is not a terrible film, far from it, but it's nowhere near as good as it could be.

The plot is simple enough. An outlaw gang (headed up by Duncan) are planning a profitable train robbery. But when one of the gang loses out in a shoot-out, Duncan is reluctantly persuaded to use his younger brother, Jake. The robbery doesn't get too messy, but it turns out that the treasure being transported is a young woman named Pearl. Pearl convinces the gang to take her home, where they will receive a warm welcome and a reward. They'll receive a lot more than that, considering her town houses a multitude of dangerous creatures.

The biggest problem with the first half of The Pale Door is that it feels as if it is retreading material we already saw executed so well in Dead Birds. Unfortunately, the problem with the second half is that it becomes so predictable and dull that you wish it would get back to trying to emulate Dead Birds. The problem seems to lie with the script, co-written by Koontz with Cameron Burns and Keith Lansdale. The cast do what they can, but they're weighed down by the obviousness of the plotting, and also the moments that Koontz decides to drag out for what seems an interminably long time (seriously, the final scenes in this movie feel like they add half an hour to the whole bloody thing).

Knighton is good as Duncan, Devin Druid is your typical reluctant kid acting tough, and does well, and Bill Sage is a central part of the outlaw gang, and someone always willing to do whatever needs to be done to save their own skin. Stan Shaw and Pat Healy do solid work, Noah Segan is underused, as is everyone else playing a gang member. Natasha Bassett does well with her wide-eyed innocent character who we know has some dark secret to her character, and Melora Walters is a highlight as Maria, a matriarchal figure in the town who is very open about her true intentions quite early on in the proceedings.

There are some good little touches throughout (figures scrabbling across walls and ceilings to attack the main characters, a sequence involving people being manipulated while they try to stay sheltered in a small church), but not enough to keep things enjoyably varied. Once things go from relative normality to bullets vs. evil denizens then it all turns a bit dull. The editing could have been sharper, and maybe having so much happen in the space of 5-10 minutes in the middle of the film wasn't the best decision. Drawing things out a bit more, in the right ways, would have helped, while other scenes would benefit from being trimmed, or excised completely.

5/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Mubi Monday: We Are What We Are (2013)

A remake of a 2010 Mexican movie (which I have yet to see), We Are What We Are is a film I'd been hearing good things about for the past few years. I really wanted to see the original film first, but the timing didn't work out. That leaves me with this insular experience, nothing to compare and contrast it to, so anyone who has seen the 2010 movie should bear that in mind.

The Parker family are a strange lot. The father (Frank, played by Bill Sage) seems to spend a lot of his time reminding his daughters (Rose, played by Julia Garner, and Iris, played by Ambyr Childers) of the importance of their family traditions. There's also a younger son (Rory, played by Jack Gore) to be looked after. And the family are cannibals, which starts to come to the attention of a local doctor (Michael Parks) after he performs an autopsy on the dead mother. As the doctor is also looking for his missing daughter, he has a vested interest in finding out the truth, no matter how unpalatable it may be (no pun intended).

A family drama with occasional dollops of gore, this is a fairly tame and aesthetically-muted film from director Jim Mickle (who reworks the original into screenplay form with his favoured muse, Nick Damici, once again). Fans of his style will recognise his fingerprints throughout but it's impressive to see him create something that manages to feel like his work while also feeling removed from any of his previous outings.

The cast are uniformly excellent, even Gore as the youngest family member. Garner gets the most to do, and handles it all very capably, but Sage and Childers do great work, and Parks gives another of those performances that made him such an additional joy to watch in the latter portion of his career. There are also good supporting turns from Kelly Mcgillis and Wyatt Russell (both also effectively used by Mickle in previous films).

A cannibal movie more about the baggage that can be passed along from one generation to the next, We Are What We Are may prove slightly disappointing to anyone wanting blood-drenched gut-munching. But it should be a worthwhile viewing for those who go in expecting a quality drama with some thrills and a side dish of viscera.

7/10

You can chew on the movie here.
Americans can eat this.