Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings
Directed by: Declan O’Brian
USA/Germany, 2011
Horror, 93min
Tut, tut, tut… Twentieth Century Fox… You bastards. Tut,
tut, tut, Declan O’Brian. Despite the fact that I every now and then can enjoy
franchise fare –which in more than one way is the elevator muzak of horror
cinema – it really rubs me the wrong way on occasions because of it’s predictability,
ridicule and wafer thin plots. Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings is one such
movie, and although I try not to trash movies here, I just have to give a few
pointers as to why I feel this one didn’t’ really make it work.
Being part four in an on-going franchise, which basically rips
off The Hills Have Eyes and sticks it in a slightly different context, naming
this entry “Bloody Beginnings” is a goddamned joke. The movie opens with a
short “way back in 1974” pre-title sequence where two doctors gawk the caged up
freaks, and gives minimal insight into the three disfigured inbreeds known as
the “Hilliker Brothers”. A hand full of dialogue lines are strewn about and
then as through magic – or a stolen hair pin – the boogeymen break out, release
the other freaks, and slaughter the Doctors… Then it’s rapidly back to 2000now,
and I’m still waiting for the bloody beginnings as a few lines of dialogue,
some gory effects and torture machines constructed by what I thought where
inbred freaks, not rocket scientists, don’t’ really give any insight into the
genesis of the Hilliker brothers at all. Hell, at least Platinum Dunes had the
decency to try giving some insight into the tormented life of young
Leatherface in their shit feast Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - didn't work, but they tried. The main question is why the hell do we need to explain evil every goddamned time? Don't you think the horror would be even deeper if you didn't know WHY?
Then credits, and there’s a fast cut to not one, but two
couples fucking. One heterosexual and the other, which is most likely supposed
to shock us in the way it’s shot and edited, is a homosexual couple. Oh, lesbians,
not gays, gays would be way too alienating for the conventional genre audience.
Guess what, they buzzing from post coital buzz when clueless
Kenia [Jenny Pudavick] stomps into the room telling them to get ready for their
weekend in the woods, without making a single remark about the four naked
people or the rancid musky smell that must linger in that room.
Further ridicule is added to the “plot” when one of the gang
members has a premonition that something bad will happen… or was he the only
one to pay attention to the weather report that flagged for sudden shock snowstorms?
Following a shitty snow scooter sequence – which has the
leading lady Pudavick – grinning moronically as if she’s in a Tampax commercial – the
gang in an attempt to avoid the storm by taking the wrong trail – doh, never
saw that one coming – and when they are midst white out, they bump into the abandoned
– but strangely still heated – Glenville Sanatorium of the opening sequence. They
bunk up for the night, find a couple of bottles of thirty year old whiskey and
then oh my fucking god, the obligatory “do any of you guys have cell coverage”
moment! I have to force myself from ramming my note pen right into my eye as to
never have to sit through another by the book generic horror flick ever again.
Why, oh why do we need to have cell coverage scenes in every fucking movie? You
loose me completely at that point.
Stereotypical characters – such as the lesbian couple who
despite what’s going on, make out and have it off at least three times during
the ninety minute film, dorky pot smoking dudes, third base girlfriends, nerdy
guy and quirky virginal heroine hardly create empathy for any of the characters
what so ever, and make’s the movie feel agonisingly tedious for long times. When
shit hit’s the fan – almost 40 minutes in – it becomes routinely run, run, run,
chase, chase, chase, where ever second scene feels like a “Oh you go that way,
I’ll go this way”, “If we split up we hold a better chance of finding blah,
blah…” you get the picture. It’s as if the screenwriters never watched Wes Craven’s
Scream, because all the jokes he was shooting off where aimed at the bullshit
which had become generic horror! 
There’s never a real moment where it lands and generates
emotions for anyone at all, and something that really felt out of place was the
melancholic music every time a character dies… strange, and totally out of
place, as I still don’t give a fuck about them, and this far in they are merely
lambs to the slaughter and I want to see them die terrifying deaths. At best it
feels like a gory episode of Scooby Doo, and perhaps this is why the sudden
quick-fix ending doesn’t really do anything for me either. The only thing
missing is that the gang – the few left – round up the inbred monsters, rip off
their masks and reveal Dr. McQuaid from the opening segment to be the real
villain! Zoinks Scooby!
Despite the pie-tossing above, and my annoyance of arrogant,
insulting filmmaking, yeah, I find it arrogant, as said this is what
gives genre films a bad rep, the cooperate hotdog factory of terror turds, I’m
sure that Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings will find it’s prime audience. I’m
not the target for generic horror anymore, it was way over two decades ago I
was in that niche. After all if you want a few shots of tits’n’ass, water thin
plot that plays by all the rules and conventions, shallow characters and a lot
of cheap jump scares, some really cool and brutal special effects, then you
know that this move is right up your street… which is why Wrong Turn 5:
Bloodbath is already slated and Doug Bradley is supposed to star… "Jesus wept!"... wait, that's another franchise they took to hell already isn't it?
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