Wrong Turn (2021)-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

Plot Summary: A group of friends take a wrong turn during a hike and come across a group of people in the mountains who have sinister intentions. 

We are officially living in an era where reboots are taking precedence over original stories.

It is as if the filmmakers have raised their hands, and accepted defeat for the fact that there is a dearth of original stories. So what plans have they come up with? To make reboots of every movie in the past few decades that have even remotely worked.

So now, it is the turn of Wrong Turn, a horror movie about inbred cannibals that sparked at least five sequels.

But if you are thinking about a revisit to the family of cannibals, then you are going to be disappointed.

No cannibals here. So what exactly to these six unsuspecting friends find when they take a wrong turn? A couple of boring people who like to dress up as the early men.

WRONG TURN (2021) Movie Plot 

Thr movie begins with a man called Scott driving into a town and visiting the police station to register a missing report of his daughter Jen who hasn't called or texted him in six weeks. She had gone hiking with her boyfriend and two other couples after which she disappeared.

Thr sheriff thinks she's probably too busy with her boyfriend and makes a remark about her boyfriend's skin colour. Scott isn't too pleased with the slur and goes to the bar to ask anyone if they've seen Jen. Everyone declines except for one patron who says he had seen Jen and her friends but then even after a warning they still went to the mountains.

As Scott leaves, the camera focuses on the patron. Clearly, he's hiding something.

We go back to six weeks prior to Scott's arrival in town. Jen and her boyfriend Darius arrive in Virginia with their friends Adam, Mills, Luis and Gary. The receptionist at the inn they are saying also warns them to stay on the trail but of course, the friends pay no heed to her.

At night, in the bar, Luis and Gary are very much aware they are amongst conservatives and feel uncomfortable with their relationship. Darius too is on edge because he's expecting to hear a lot of racist things. The other customers look at the friends but no one passes any comments about race or sexual preference. Rather they all look annoyed at the friends.

The guy Scott meets six weeks later, approaches the friends and after some back and forth insinuates the friends are too biased about the people here. Jen doesn't want to take his barb and reveals that all her friends are accomplished and have worked hard for their careers. Milla, who is a doctor makes a diagnosis about the guy's eyes and thinks he may have liver issues.

The guy grumbles and leaves. When the friends come out, they see a dark figure near their car and Adam throws a bottle at him. The figure disappears and the friends assume it's the guy from the bar.

The next day the friends set off to a hike while Luis keeps asking Gary why he wasn't holding his hand at the bar and if he's embarrassed of their relationship. Gary assures him everything is fine but it is clear he knows he is in a town where people aren't too happy with people who are different. It doesn't matter that no one has said a single word against them, the friends are inclined to believe everyone is backward but them.

The friends are goofing around and having fun when they see a tree trunk rolling down the hill at them. Adam leaves Milla to save himself, the others barely jump out of the way. Gary didn't know he was supposed to take a turn and instead wants to watch the trunk rolling down at him. He is squashed by it and the other friends decide to leave him there and return to call for help because they are in a horror movie and no spoiler alert, their phones are not working.

The friends make their way back but get lost and have to set up camp. Jen thinks she sees someone outside her tent but then goes back to sleep. The next morning, everyone's phones are missing and so is Milla.

Adam assumes the worst and the friends search high and low for their friend when they see a girl called Ruthie wandering about. Jen recognises her because she had bought some overly expensive, cheap-looking bracelets from Ruthie's mother Edith.

Jen tells Adam she is innocent but he believes that it is too much of a coincidence that Milla disappears and the girl appears out of nowhere.

While chasing her, Adam gets his leg trapped and is pulled into a hole. The friends try to save him by just screaming his name a lot.

Jen, Luis and Darius decide that they have to come up with a plan to escape the forest when they see two men in skulls and wearing dried grass all over, carrying Adam on a stick as if taking him for a luau.

The friends immediately come out of their hiding spot and while the two men in skulls talk in a different language, free Adam who instead of stretching his arms after being tied for too long, gets into vigorous exercise by beating down a man violently and crushing his skull.

The other hunter runs away and Jen plays moral police questioning how they knew for sure that Adam was truly going to be cooked and eat. At this point, it seems the filmmakers are trying really hard to give us the impression that this movie is like the other instalments and there is some cannibalism involved. It is all a ruse but not for the characters, for the audience.

Adam goes off at Jen telling her that it seemed obvious he was attacked and then Milla shows up and tells everyone she went to pee and then got lost. Apparently, Milla walked a long way off from the camping site to pee at night. They were all lost but Milla was too shy to pee a few feet away and decides to walk to the other side of the forest to go to the bathroom. While everyone shows concern, Milla then tells them she didn't know she needed their permission to go to the bathroom.

A guy was pretty much murdered because of her by her boyfriend who thought his girlfriend was murdered but Milla wants to know why she had to announce she needed to go to the bathroom.

The friends walk about a bit and then see more people wearing skulls as masks and dirt and grass for clothes. They run about but Milla falls into a trap and is stabbed by the spokes inside. Adam had promised to never leave her side but realising his girlfriend had little chance to survive, runs away.

Milla is killed by a hunter and the rest of the friends are captured.

When Jen comes to, she finds herself in a pit, stripped and bound. She screams for help and Edith lifts the board just enough to ask if Jen is going to behave or not. The reward is going to be food and water.

Jen screams at first and Edith rolls her eyes and leaves. Then she comes back after some time to send down a bucket of water in which a crusty bread roll and apple is floating. Jen eats the soggy bread and apple, drinks water and is then brought up.

She finds Darius, Adam and Luis in the same state as her. They exchange no hellos. Clearly, fun times are over.

They are introduced to John, the leader of the group of people known as The Foundation. They think they are better than everyone in the world because they hint wearing skulls and hay, have their own barbaric laws and hold onto conservative beliefs.

They are taken to court with John presiding over the case of who killed one of the members. It was Adam who crushed that guy's skull and Jen tries hopelessly to save him by lying.

Adam is sentenced to suffering the same punishment he inflicted on the member of their tribe. The others are sentenced to darkness for lying.

Luis makes a dumb move to escape and is obviously caught and blinded, then thrown into a dark cave.

Adam has his skull crushed in front of everyone. An eye for an eye.

WRONG TURN Ending Explained with Spoilers! 

Jen makes a deal with John, offering Darius's services to help them sustain in the woods through renewable energy. She has no other talent or services to offer so she offers herself, claiming she is young and healthy.

Edith immediately checks her mouth for cavities. Surely there must be one cavity? Jen hasn't brushed in days by now.

Edith seems satisfied but angry at the proposal. John takes Jen for himself and she willingly sets about on her wifely duties.

Elsewhere, Scott decides to follow his daughter's hiking trail and then gets beaten up by the guys in the bar. The next day he is told by the receptionist to not go into the woods. When he doesn't listen, she takes him to see her nephew who wants revenge on the Foundation people for hitting him with an arrow.

They set about the woods and Scott thinks he's in safe hands because of his guides.

Wrong.

They are killed almost immediately because of the traps still laying about. You would think they would have been alert while roaming around the woods considering they are locals, but nope, Scott is more aware than they are.

He's also surprisingly nimble as he easily climbs over rocks and stuff. He is obviously caught and Jen greets him with an arrow to his shoulder. Then later at night she visits him and tells him it was for his own good and sets him free.

They go through a tunnel and see Luis with his eyes gouged out and feeding on human flesh. The filmmaker's last resort to use one element of similarity with the other Wrong Turn movies. It doesn't work and Jen thinks so too because she shoots Luis in the face and leaves.

She then goes to Darius who doesn't want to come with her because he has finally found his tribe where people respect him.

She kisses him goodbye and Darius is shocked because he doesn't want to kiss someone else's wife anymore.

Jen and Scott are terrible at running away and are detected. Luckily the guys at the bar show up, explaining they were trying to deter Scott from coming here by beating him up. They just went for his face instead of his legs so their plan failed terribly.

The guys from the bar end up losing their lives save for one who throws a Molotov cocktail to stop John from following them.

John states angrily, unable to believe he's experiencing a violent divorce.

Sometime later, Jen and Scott are in the business together to build and restore houses. When Jen reaches home, her mother (stepmother I think), has invited their new neighbour for lunch.

It is none other than John and Ruthie. Jen imagines telling her family who John really is and sees him killing her family immediately before using her knife on John.

Shr snaps back to reality tells her family to get lost because John is here to talk business. The mother doesn't ask questions and simply leaves along with her two sons.

Jen agrees to come with John if he promises not to hurt her family. John agrees only because Jen is pregnant with his child and he wants to see her happy.

She leaves with John and enters the RV.

The end credits roll but the movie hasn't ended. The RV swerves and hits a tree. Jen had always been hiding a knife in her pockets. She murders everyone except for Ruthie and then gets off the RV and walks away with her.

The movie had some moments but it is clearly not anything like the Wrong Turn franchise. They could have just used another title. Wrong Road. Wrong Idea to go in the woods. Wrong friends.

But the movie is named Wrong Turn just to poke fun at the inbred cannibalism theme from the other movies without providing any engaging thrills. In fact, the movie seemed longer than it probably was.

Scare scale: 2.5/5