At a certain point in Wrong Turn, I had to pause the movie. It was getting too unpredictable—not the usual cannibal-hillbillies-stalk-yuppies fare I was prepared to see. Midway through, I could already tell the movie was capable, inspired, and wanted to say something. Instead of finishing the movie, I had to get my wife, who opted out of this remake initially after having little affection for the 2003 original. While she started from the beginning, I busied myself in another room; and once she had caught up to my stopping point, we resumed the movie together. Fortunately, the first half that had defied almost every expectation was followed by a second-half that was, we both agreed, equally unpredictable. The best horror movies deviate from the standard in compelling ways, making slight adjustments to the proven formula that push the genre forward. Wrong Turn innovates on its predecessors as though its screenwriter, Alan McElroy, who also wrote the original, mapped out his first script and, starting in the same basic place, resolved to choose every alternate path to the one he had taken before. It might be a self-conscious exercise in divergence; it might also be the most inventive horror remake … Continue reading Wrong Turn