Thursday, January 3, 2013

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)




It’s 1974, Glensville Sanatorium houses a select bunch of dangerous patients, and all hell breaks lose during an ordinary visit from a psychiatrist. The visiting psychiatrist, the head doctor, and his staff suffer brutal deaths at the hands of three escaped inbred cannibals/patients. Three-Finger (Sean Skene), One-Eye (Daniel Skene), and Saw-Tooth (Scott Johnson) carry out the murders. Glensville Sanatorium becomes a mess of blood and body parts, while Three-Finger, One-Eye, and Saw-Tooth disappear without a trace.

Twenty-nine years later, a group of friends decide to go snowmobiling during winter. Afterwards, they plan on visiting a friend’s cabin in the mountains. Sara (Tenika Davis) and her girlfriend, Bridget (Kaitlyn Wong), Kenia (Jenny Pudavick), Claire (Samantha Kendrick), her boyfriend Kyle (Victor Zinck, Jr.), Jenna (Terra Vnsea), her boyfriend Vincent (Sean Skene), Lauren (Ali Tataryn) and her boyfriend Daniel (Dean Armstrong) are headed for a vacation at their friend Porter’s cabin in the mountains.

During a rough snowstorm, the group of friends find refuge in the abandoned Glensville Sanatorium. But after some puzzling disappearances and the sight of Porter’s dismembered  body, the friends realize they’re not alone. The friends don’t have a reliable form of transportation anymore, because Three-Finger, One-Eye, and Saw-Tooth sabotaged their snowmobiles,  and the friends quickly run out of options, as the snowstorm becomes worse.

With the slight exception of Jenny Pudavick, the entire cast is just awful. Too many unconvincing and lazy performances, and there’s no need to mention the cannibals, because they don’t receive any spoken dialogue, just a lot of growling, grunting, heavy breathing, and moaning.

Well, if you’re looking for lots of blood, violence, nudity, and sex, Bloody Beginnings won’t disappoint you, because you’ll see all of this stuff within the first twelve minutes of the movie. But gore and naked women couldn’t save this film for me. Too many stupid characters, bad writing, and atrocious dialogue. The Vincent character is wondering around the sanatorium one night, and he suddenly shouts “Better not be playin’ with me dude! I’ll beat the shit out of you!” I just shook my head, and I seriously thought about turning the movie off before reaching the forty minute mark.

And the sneaky tactics from the cannibals raised too many question marks for me. So let me get this straight, they can’t talk or form a coherent sentence, they can’t read or write, and the cannibals don’t possess any knowledge of the modern outside world. BUT somehow Three-Finger, One-Eye, and Saw Tooth are capable of understanding the circuitry in snowmobiles, so they can sabotage them, and towards the end use the snowmobiles as vehicles for hunting the survivors. Plus, they’re capable of setting up complex traps (i.e. the barbed wire trap at the very end), and operating a tow truck? Bullshit.

NOW I remember why I stopped paying attention to the Wrong Turn films. After the original, this series really took a dive, releasing one shitty straight-to-video sequel after another. Wrong Turn 4 is a prequel for the original, and IF you care to know, Wrong Turn 4 establishes a vague backstory for the cannibals in the original. But it’s not much, because after the intro, Wrong Turn 4 doesn’t bother to continue the explanation for the origins of Three-Finger, One-Eye, and Saw Tooth.

Truth be told, the Wrong Turn franchise hit the “for fans only” stage after the original, because I can’t imagine any outsiders going out of their way to take a chance on these films. Bloody Beginnings is a cheap and lazy straight-to-video horror film. If you’re looking for an endless amount of gross-out deaths, Wrong Turn 4 will give you everything you ask for and more. But I can’t ignore the bad directing, the incompetent cast, shallow characters, and one of the most generic screenplays ever.

Final Rating: 1/10

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