Owing to the success of his debut feature, the post-apocalyptic action horror film The Domestics, writer and director Mike P. Nelson soon received an offer to direct a Wrong Turn revamp. Floored by the original film’s writer, Alan B. McElroy’s new script that shrewdly reflected the state of the mind of the world today, he agreed to helm the project there and then.
Another aspect of the script that reeled him in was the fact that the antagonists in the film were not your typical bad guys: “They’re not the backwoods hicks. They’re not the white supremacists. This is a movie where the audience will think they know who these characters are and we’ll completely flip that prejudice on its head.”
Starring Charlotte Vega (The Lodgers), Adain Bradley (“The 100”), Bill Sage (American Psycho, We Are What We Are) and Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket, “Stranger Things”), McElroy’s return to the franchise follows Jen and her group of friends who are all at critical junctions in their young lives. For this reason, trekking the Appalachian trail was supposed to give them a bit of clarity in terms of what they should do with their lives. At least that was what they thought until they accidentally cross into land inhabited by “The Foundation,” a hidden community of mountain dwellers who use deadly means to protect their way of life.
With Wrong Turn getting a VOD, Digital, DVD and Blu-ray release on February 23rd, SCREAM sat down with Nelson to discuss how this take on the franchise divulges in how we are all capable of being the most extreme versions of ourselves and when those extremes collide, one person’s dream can become another person’s nightmare…
Words: Howard Gorman
