Not that 2003’s Wrong Turn is any sort of classic, but any degree of effectiveness in conjuring cases of the heebie-jeebies has been dulled by the mild hit film’s five sequels. All made for the direct-to-DVD market, those increasingly silly — but comfort-food satisfying — installments made the predators the stars instead of the prey. Now, original screenwriter Alan B. McElroy (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers) returns to press the reset button. Hard.

The result, also titled Wrong Turn, follows Jen (Charlotte Vega, American Assassin) and five of her millennial friends — “goddamn hipster freaks” to the locals — as they arrive in Virginia to hike the Appalachian Trail. Even if there weren’t a six-weeks-later prologue of Jen’s father (Matthew Modine, 47 Meters Down) attempting to locate his missing daughter, we know not all these beautiful young people will make it to the final frame. In fact, we count on it!

Rather cleverly, McElroy and director Mike P. Nelson (The Domestics) use your knowledge of the original and/or its sequels against you — or at least for the benefit of their reboot. What you expect to be a slasher instead becomes something of a folk horror tale. Still, the filmmakers are not above smashing someone with a runaway log. An ominous warning of “Nature eats everything it catches” resonates as Wrong Turn ’21’s theme, sacrificing characters to other booby traps in the forest.

The surprise is how solid the movie is — for the first half. Its initial scenes of Jen and her pals exploring a quiet town of deer hunters and Confederate flags are more frightening than anything happening along the trail, in part because rural folks not taking kindly to tourists from the city isn’t just some trope. Modine’s quest finds deep roots in realism as well. From there, McElroy and Nelson’s pivot toward the road not taken is an admirable one, yet not as gratifying as their movie’s steps to get there. As well-made as this seventh installment is, I never thought I’d end up missing dear ol’ Saw-Tooth, One-Eye and Three-Finger, but I do. —Rod Lott

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If I were a betting man, I’d place all my chips on the theory that Renaud Gauthier’s Aquaslash came into existence because of one scene. Admittedly (not to mention literally), it’s a killer: the one where most unfortunate watersliding teens meet a big, bladed “X” on their trip down the tube, and the bratty popular girl at the front immediately gets quartered into nice, neat (but bloody) pieces shaped like pie slices, as if the gods were playing Trivial Pursuit with dismembered humans.

Placed there on purpose by a gloved person unknown, the blades are inserted many, many minutes before Aquaslash gets around to paying them off. Gauthier even periodically cuts (no pun intended) to show them in wait amid rushing chlorinated water in an otherwise empty flume; no shot has been teased so mercilessly in cinema since Catherine Tramell’s Great Leg Uncrossing of 1992.

When the carnage arrives, it’s easily the movie’s highlight — but almost by default, because Gauthier (Discopath) has no other comparable bit to offer. Everything in this waterpark-set story appears to have been written around that novel death — and forced if necessary, as if Piranha 3DD already claimed every other possible waterslide gag. (Come to think of it, yeah, it did.)

Of course, originality is not on Aquaslash’s to-do list. Being an exercise in 1980s nostalgia, the movie takes place at Wet Valley Water Park, where the class of 2018 continue its high school’s decades-old tradition of a weekend-long party at the site, seedy motel rooms included. Several characters are introduced at once with little delineation beyond who hates whom, who gets high with whom, who’s fucking whom and who’s playing in the cover band (TRIGGER WARNING: Corey Hart). Key affiliations among them aren’t made clear until well into the last 20 of its rather expeditious 71 minutes, but really, when everyone is this unlikable and you know they’re mere pawns awaiting execution, does it matter?

French-Canadian to the point of seeming alien, Aquaslash attempts some comedy, only one line of which truly succeeds: “You’re built like a Swiffer.” —Rod Lott

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