Allegories of Climate Emergency in Wrong Turn

Atomic Bomb Explosion - WW2. Credit: The Conversation

Trigger Warnings - Cannibalism.

In its origin, nuclear research started around 1845. The research and progress accelerated rapidly between then and 1945, with some fundamental breakthroughs being found in WW2. Naturally then, the majority of the research after the splitting of the atom had come within military and weapon research. So humanity gave birth to the atomic bomb. The most devastating thing we’ve ever created. The absolute carnage that has been done since then, especially with Hiroshima, has been so extreme that while countries do have nuclear weapons, everyone has agreed not to use them. In this world of war, bloodshed, and often a lack of certain human lives, many countries can still reach the consensus that nuclear war and dropping nuclear bombs is… a bit too much.

Nuclear energy, however, has been a deep form of research as an alternative to fossil fuels for decades. It has been debated intensely, especially in the wake of the absolute tragedy that Chernobyl was. Land that nuclear devastation has touched, even decades later (many scientists surmise that radiation sits in the explosion spot for hundreds of years.) still feels the effects. People that live there give birth to generations with birth defects and a whole list of health problems. A human invention that teeters on a strange balance of possibility, a testament to science and human advancement, and unimaginable pain and mass death.

The Earth’s Most Toxic Lava - The Elephant’s Foot, Chernobyl. Credit: Forbes

The environmental ramifications of nuclear and toxic waste have been a hot topic as climate change is imminent. The long-term health effects and the questions raised of how to store nuclear and toxic waste and whether there is a long-term solution, float into my head every time I watch two of my favorite films (there are anymore, but I love the first two).

Wrong Turn.

If you’re unfamiliar, Wrong Turn is a franchise that revolves around a band of mutated cannibals that live in a dense forest in America. The first film stars Eliza Dushku, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Kevin Zegers, Jeremy Sisto, and Desmond Harrington. Harrington’s character, Chris, is late for a job interview, so he takes what he thinks is a shortcut to get away from the traffic jam (always the first mistake.) As he drives down a winding road and the dense trees shadow the sky, he crashes into another car, full of a stranded group of friends that are trying to have a nice getaway. Well… They’re going to have some sort of getaway, alright.

Sawtooth, Wrong Turn, 2003 - Credit: 20th Century Fox/IMDb

Quickly, as they are looking for help to repair both cars, they are sent running for their lives from the mutants living in the forest that are probably getting ravenous. There’s a key thing I love about these films. I’m a lover of cannibal films, but the modern setting and the fact the cannibals use vehicles, set traps, and are masters of their home terrain gives all the tension that you need. It makes the horror more palpable. Our protagonists must outsmart these, at first sight, primitive beings, but they have studied every inch of this land, beautifully framed in the chase scenes. They hunt efficiently and there are some brutal captures and killings in it. The director plays with both sound, silence, and different depths of motion to keep your eyes affixed.

There’s something deeper in these films. I often see these cannibals as a metaphor. All cannibals are a metaphor to some extent, but these in particular have a really interesting angle. This is cleared up in the second film. Eating of the flesh and being hunted brings us into proximity with our mortality. The subversion of the “primitive” being the more comfortable in environments and being a vehicle for redemption and justice in cannibal films is always nothing short of beautiful. The metaphor of being eaten for whatever reason, a deep comeuppance for some sort of human fault—greed, ignorance, racism, indifference to others. The Wrong Turn cannibals serve as some sort of allegory for environmental damage.

Hear me out.

The cannibals live a rural lifestyle. Living off the land, and on any intruders that would come into their land. In some scenes, there are sexual undertones that are swiftly cut away from. These cannibals seem to just want to eat. They have very simplistic needs, as much as the force of nature. It doesn’t matter where you are, who you are, or what you’ve done. An earthquake is an earthquake. Wildfires are wildfires. Tsunamis are tsunamis. And so on. With scientists pleading that we reverse corporate habits of fuel consumption and carbon emission like… LAST WEEK, the Wrong Turn clan is the perfect allegory.

Three Finger - Wrong Turn 2 - Credit: 20th Century Fox/IMDb

They are natural, guttural and they do not care about the systems of discrimination we have. Meat is meat. They also care not about the level of violence. They cut through their victims as a hurricane does every town it touches. They are at one with their land. They are completely off-grid, living off of natural resources, maintain a family dynamic, and have strong ties to each other, hunting in packs. A joining of the elements almost to destroy but only in reaction to what they have been through.

As we watch the cannibals rip through countless of our main characters in the first Wrong Turn, Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, starring Henry Rollins, takes us through a survival reality TV show he is hosting. Knowingly, much like those corporations who have been decimating the planet and the journalists who downplay it to stay in favor and reap benefits of monetary and social capital, take part in a game of survival of the fittest against a foe so naturally more powerful than us. Although in the real world, survival of the fittest is survival of the richest.

In the second, we also have the protagonists trying to survive, participating in cannibalism themselves, having found they have eaten one of their other participants’ legs. In this way, it’s almost an indirect symbolism of the way we are all complicit in some way in harming the environment and the things that will come our way as a result. The media’s deflection from the corporation doing the bulk of the damage is to focus on individual efforts, although without corporations cutting back on the 80% of the world emissions they churn out, our earth is doomed.

In the end, to tie this all up, we learn that the mutation of the cannibals started 30 years ago, by toxic waste dumped into the rivers, and inbreeding. The final scene in the second film reinforces this, with the remaining cannibals feeding a small mutant baby with a bottle of the luminescent green waste and feeding the little cherub a human finger.

The Baby, Wrong Turn 2 - 20th Century Fox/IMDb

The Wrong Turn films are gore-filled, high-octane, screeching fun, but this allegory is such a wonderful undertone, whether intentional or not, and reinforces my deep love and admiration of a genre I find so political, so beautifully multi-layered, and in my humble opinion, so damn revolutionary.