Review: Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)

Director: Declan O’Brien | 90 minutes | action, horror, thriller | Actors: Jennifer Pudavick, Tenika Davis, Kaitlyn Wong, Terra Vnesa, Victor Zinck Jr., Dean Armstrong, Ali Tataryn, Samantha Kendrick, Arne Macpherson, Kristen Harris, Sean Skene, Blane Cypurda, Dan Skene, Tristan Carlucci, Scott Johnson, Bryan Verot, Dave Harms, Glen Thompson

A group of young people (you can’t even call it friends, given the mutual bickering, underwater stabbing and downright nasty tricks) is planning to go skiing for a week in the snowy mountains of West Virginia. Despite the weather alert, the youngsters go out, assuming the group’s leader still knows the way. The title of the film already indicates that this is not the case. It is freezing cold, the darkness is already setting in, but look there! The outline of an old building! The group has been saved for the night!

Not that we wouldn’t know without the prologue to “Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings”, but of course the abandoned building is not right. Connoisseurs of (one of) the earlier films in this franchise have seen them before: the unhealthy looking brothers Three Finger, Saw Tooth and One Eye, who were born in their family thanks to inbreeding, but were not satisfied with breast milk or peanut butter sandwiches. . They wanted human flesh! “Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings” pretends to be a prequel to the earlier films and, like other films in the genre, to explain the how and why of the monstrous creatures. Apart from the aforementioned prologue, in which the three creeps in 1974 seriously devastated the staff of the hospital where they were locked up until then, we get very little background information. Yes, the cannibals have an exceptionally high pain threshold, because they suffer from an advanced form of congenital analgesia (the same thing Ronald Niederman suffered from in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series), but that’s really all. As soon as the title appears on the screen, we have arrived in the “present” (2003) and this fourth part does not differ from earlier parts.

Like “Wrong Turn 3”, “Bloody Beginnings” was also directed by Declan O’Brien. Not such a strong move by 20th Century Fox, as the third part was very poorly received and O’Brien’s name on the credits will no doubt scare off benevolent horror fans. And that is quite right, because a good film cannot be called “Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings”. The incongruities in the plot can no longer be counted on two hands and the acting also leaves a lot to be desired. Now the latter is common and it doesn’t really disturb, but in combination with the laughable dialogues, the accumulation of bad decisions that the group makes and the cheap scare effects, it does cause annoyance.

Fans of the genre who like to see a lot of blood and guts appear on the screen, however, will get their money’s worth. You cannot call the murders inventive, all the more repulsive. And what is also surprising for the change: the order in which the youngsters will come to their gruesome end is not entirely predictable. Other than that, “Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings” is not a film that strays from the beaten track.