WRONG TURN 4: BLOODY BEGINNINGS

(A.k.a. WRONG TURN 4)

That’s right, because what the horror community needs now is another WRONG TURN sequel …

We open in Glenville Sanatorium, West Virginia. The year is 1974. A new female doctor is being shown around the place, and warned in particular to stay away from three inbred brothers who were found feasting on their own parents.

Inevitably, said psychos escape moments later and attack their keepers. Cue scenes of face-eating, extreme shock therapy and one guy being literally torn apart. The lunatics have taken over the asylum!

Fast-forward to Weston University, 2003. A bunch of horny students are enjoying the snowy winter they’re having. In-between copious bouts of fucking, of course.

Headed by geeky Daniel (Dean Armstrong) and gorgeous good girl Kenia (Jennifer Pudavick), the group also includes superhot lesbians Sara (Tenika Davis) and Bridget (Kaitlyn Leeb), and obligatory prankster Vincent (Sean Skene).

They embark on their snowmobiles one morning and go off in pursuit of a holiday cottage. Unfortunately, they end up taking a wrong turn midway through the nearby forest and stumble across what appears to be an abandoned old building.

Despite the fact there’s no apparent electricity and the place is soon discovered to be a disused asylum, the group decides it would be a good place to party in. They take a tour of the place and eventually find the power switch. This enables a shindig which takes in dancing, drinking, making out and wheelchair races.

Of course, what they don’t yet know is that the three kids who escaped from their cell 29 years earlier have now grown up to be One Eye (Dan Skene), Saw Tooth (Scott Johnson) and Three Finger (Sean Skene again) – the cannibalistic mainstays of the WRONG TURN franchise.

As the party ends and the group retire to their respective beds for the evening, they’re about to realise what a bad idea sticking around really was …

It’s easy to scoff at horror franchises. It’s easy to instantly dismiss each new entry under the rule of "diminishing returns". It’s easy to belittle the filmmakers onstage in the same manner that a presenter at Frightfest 2012 did, challenging the makers of OUTPOST 2 about the need for a part 3 ("aren’t you just making the same film over and over?"). But surely, if a film is good, it doesn’t matter …?

Actually, WRONG TURN 4 is a prequel and as such does a fair job of at least explaining how series regulars such as One Eye and Saw Tooth earned their names. While providing healthy, regular doses of boobies and explicit bloodletting.

What the film doesn’t do so well is engage. The protagonists are not likeable, and the monsters simply aren’t interesting enough. It’s clear from the premise of innocents forced to summon barbaric instincts in order to defend themselves and a perverse dinner-set set-piece that the filmmakers are aspiring towards the same territory as THE HILLS HAVE EYES and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE – but this is too slick, too polished and too safe to even come close.

Humour comes in bursts but proves yet again that, when it comes to providing the laughs, horror filmmakers really should tread carefully. No giggles here.

Still, Declan O’Brien’s direction is proficient when it comes to shooting action and the pace is spot on. Lovers of gore will delight in the no-holds-barred grisliness (gut-spilling, eye-gougings, flesh eating – those kinds of things) and the succession of creative kills.

Just don’t go looking for characterisation or realism. As if you would.

WRONG TURN 4 is, then, flawed. But it works as switch-off-brain entertainment. Predictable? Yes. Badly acted? Of course. Ground-breaking? It doesn’t attempt to be: it knows its core audience and delivers the goods for them. Consequently, it holds the attention in a throwaway manner and emerges as the best entry in the series so far, alongside part 2.

As you’d imagine, 20th Century Fox’s DVD looks very handsome. The film comes uncut in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio and has been 16x9 enhanced. Colours are lush but natural, image clarity is as stunning as standard definition can be, and a nice sense of depth can be witnessed in all the glorious exterior shots.

Likewise, English audio comes kitted and booted in a finely balanced, rowdy 5.1 surround mix. Optional subtitles are well-written and easy to read.

The disc opens with a blu-ray showcase trailer, then leads into a static main menu page. From there, a static scene-selection menu allows access to the film via 24 chapters.

Extras begin with an affable commentary track from O’Brien.

He also turns up in the 7-minute featurette, "Director’s Die-Ary". A video diary/blog-type thing, split into daily episodes of brief running time. It shows the shoot to have been a jovial, albeit cold, one.

"Lifestyles of the Sick and Infamous" is a 5-minute featurette in which the producers try to convince us that the asylum used in the film is a sinister place haunted by the bad things that previously happened there.

A 3-minute promo video for a song by The Blackout City Kids mixes mediocre soft rock with ultra-gory clips from the film, to weird effect.

Finally we get 18 minutes of deleted scenes which, although anamorphic, lack the sheen of the main feature’s transfer. There are 15 in total.

Making up somewhat for the crappy third instalment from a couple of years back, WRONG TURN 4: BLOODY BEGINNINGS offers nothing new but delivers its corny premise and gore with considerable gusto. There’s a charm to it that temporarily assists the viewer in questioning why even one sequel to the lacklustre WRONG TURN exists.

20th Century Fox’s disc makes for an excellent way to view this film.

Also available on blu-ray.

Review by Stuart Willis