"a grim turn" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is often used to describe a sudden and negative change in a situation or event. Here are a few examples: - After years of success, the economy took a grim turn and many people lost their jobs. - What had started as a fun vacation took a grim turn when the weather turned and stranded us on the island. - The peaceful protest took a grim turn when a few individuals started inciting violence. - Despite their promising start, the team's season took a grim turn when their star player got injured.
And his storybook marriage took a grim turn in 2003 when his wife was found to have multiple sclerosis.
The truth is, there will always be people who need to rely on welfare, especially when the economy takes a grim turn.
Last week it took a grim turn when the guard who discovered that they had burrowed through the wall committed suicide.
But when he arrives, the two play out the same stymied story of attraction, shyness and retreat until events take a grim turn and he loses all hope of being with Jerome.
By sunrise, though, some people in and around Steubenville had gotten word that the night of fun on Aug. 11 might have taken a grim turn, and that members of the Steubenville High football team might have been involved.
That would, of course, be a grim turn of events for the normally upbeat Mr. Karmazin, Sirius XM's chief executive, who had hoped to create a mobile entertainment juggernaut with stars like Howard Stern.
(One need not undersell the forces hostile to Catholicism in our culture to recognize the sex abuse scandals as a grim turning point in the American religious story).
If the story takes a grimmer turn than that of "The Probability of Miracles," the characters compel the reader to stick with them.
In this, the third season of "Mad Men," the major characters' trajectories have all taken a decidedly grim turn.
After Monica Wesolowska gave birth to her first child, a healthy-seeming boy, things took a fast and grim turn: her son, Silvan, was taken from her arms for "observation," rushed unexpectedly through hospital hallways and ultimately given the worst possible prognosis.
Shepard was lauded for his grim turn as a man whose son is killed during a burglary in the darkly comic thriller Cold in July 20144).
