The Strangers’ Madelaine Petsch Has a Horror Movie Hot Take You Might Hate | Sorry Not Sorry

Thanks to her starring role in the new The Strangers trilogy, Madelaine Petsch is the latest actress to ascend to the title of Scream Queen. In the threesome of movies, she plays Maya, a young woman who finds herself enduring a hellish nightmare after staying in a remote holiday property. Maya’s tenacious nature and ability to maintain an immaculate manicure make her a formidable foe for the masked strangers pursuing her, but which Final Girls did Petsch look to for inspiration? 

Speaking to JustWatch about The Strangers: Chapter 3, Petsch revealed that her guilty comfort movie is backwoods slasher, Wrong Turn. 

WATCH: Madelaine Petsch Falls Asleep to WHICH Movie?!

Given the rural location of the Strangers films, Wrong Turn is the perfect film for Petsch to have locked in with. Released in 2003, the film finds Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Eliza Dushku and a pre-Dexter Desmond Harrington as members of a group of motorists who become stranded in West Virginia woodland after taking a supposed shortcut. As they set out in search of help, they find themselves the target of a vicious family of inbred cannibals that will stop at nothing to make them dinner. 

Wrong Turn borrows from classic cannibal and ‘torment in the woods’ movies such as Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It might not be a film for everyone’s horror tastes, but apparently, Madelaine Petsch can’t get enough of it. 

She admitted that the film isn’t perfect, but shared that she “rides hard for them” regardless. So what is it about Wrong Turn that she enjoys? “I like the concept. I think the concept is really f***** up.” It isn’t just the first Wrong Turn film that Petsch enjoys either, “I love one, two, three…I’m talking deep cuts.” 

Her affinity for Wrong Turn is not one shared by those around her, and during the interview, Petsch recalled her epic fail of getting a friend to watch it with her during a trip to London. “I put it on, and she’s like, ‘What the hell is this?!’” Petsch continues, “I fell asleep, and she woke up to bones clanking, and she was, ‘Are you okay? You’ve got a serious problem!” 

Why Wrong Turn Is The Best Kind Of Twisted Comfort Movie

Having a horror film as a comfort watch is nothing new, but Wrong Turn is certainly not the cuddliest of selections. That Petsch uses the movie as something of a sleep aid may sound disturbing, but it kind of makes sense. 

Set in the rural environment of the West Virginia woods, the first half of Wrong Turn has a fairly serene soundscape. Away from the city, the only sounds to hear are the rustling wind through the trees, bird song, and silence. These sounds have a soothing quality to them, and one could be forgiven for having a little snooze during these moments. As for later on, when the bloodshed starts… Well, the constant screams and shouts of terror become white noise that can easily be tuned out to assist a deep slumber.  

Why To Watch Wrong Turn (And What To Watch After) 

Personally, I’m with Petsch when it comes to Wrong Turn, but she is right when she says, “I do think everyone hates that.” Coming just a few years after the boom of the Scream and fun horror movies, Wrong Turn took audiences back to the cruelty and despair of genre films of the ‘70s. This more serious tone, coupled with its brutality, meant that the initial reaction to the film was not great. Given the films that came after, however, such as Saw and Hostel, Wrong Turn is relatively tame. Modern audiences have therefore come around on Wrong Turn, and rightly so. 

Wrong Turn is also absolutely worth a watch, especially for those brave enough to dig into the franchise, as this first film sets up the world brilliantly. Petsch is correct that Wrong Turn 2: Dead End and Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead are worth watching. After that, the series falls off a cliff, but the 2021 remake is vital viewing as it takes the concept into a very different environment. 

Once you’ve done being ‘comforted’ by Wrong Turn and its villainous trio of Saw Tooth, Three Finger, and One Eye, why not try fellow 2003 horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a remake of the 1974 movie? 

Another solid remake from that era is The Hills Have Eyes, which sees a family tormented in the desert by a clan of mutated, inbred hill folk. 

And for those wanting a more current spin on the Wrong Turn formula, there’s Butchers, which doesn’t hold back on the gore. 

However, for anyone wanting to conjure up the dread of Wrong Turn without all the body parts flying around, The X-Files episode, ‘Home’, is a must-watch. It pitted Mulder and Scully against an isolated, inbred family and had one of the most disturbing endings in the TV show's history – so much so, it was banned for a time shortly after its airing.