I must say: the premise for Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings was very intriguing to me. While the series itself has a decent entry (Wrong Turn) a semi watchable entry (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End), and an unwatchable entry (Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead), I felt that director Declan O’Brien (who also did the third entry) could do so much with a snow setting. Imagine how red the snow could get and how cool that would look! In fact, this was the premise for Jason X for a long while until they decided to take Jason Voorhees into space. Sure, there’s 30 Days of Night, but taking a family of inbred, cannibalistic beings and putting them out in the snow with a bunch of new victims? I thought that could be a fun ride! Add on the fact that writer/director O’Brien took the route of making this a prequel, and I was still on board, thinking that if I could get a feeling of how these creatures tick, it could make the other softer entries more intriguing.
Boy was I wrong! The film starts off in the year 1974, and at the sanitarium that the characters from previous films (Saw-Tooth, One-Eye, and Three-Finger) are being held. It is here that writer-director O’Brien unleashes the only original thing he brought to this fourth installment: a doctor informs the guards that these creatures are way more intelligent than the average person and they are immune to pain. No further explanation needed, and that one conversation goes a long way toward describing most of the events that occur in past films. However, it is from this point on that O’Brien’s film gears toward Sci-Fi original movie territory. Which, is fitting because with the exception of Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead, the only other credits on his resume are Asylum titles made for the Sci-Fi channel. The film’s opening sequence of the family escaping the sanitarium drags on for what seems like a half hour, until the title card finally appears on the
screen.
We then meet our “heroes,” a series of teenagers that consist of vapid women and dumb guys whose names I do not even remotely remember. Don’t worry, you wont either, because once they take a ‘wrong turn’ while having fun in the snow, ending up in the sanitarium to wait the storm out, you will be counting down the minutes for some action to start happening. Horror films are not supposed to be full of smart people. In fact, part of the fun in watching them is that they do dumb things in situations that in our heads we know we would handle better. However, this film consists of a series of bad decisions, with one VERY bad one making me want to throw my remote at my TV. This made the film stop being fun for me, and in turn making it into a bore fest. Yes, there is a scene of lesbians not minding being watched (which was so silly it was almost comedic), and a few very bloody kills (one of which reminded me a little of Hostel 2) inside the sanitarium. But, seriously folks, this film stops being fun and turns into a tedious exorcise of tolerance around the 45 minute mark. As far as the premise of being out in the snow being intriguing is concerned? Well, needless to say this premise is wasted as well, with horribly rendered CGI blood ruling the screen at one point.
My advice? Watch the first installment of this series, and avoid the rest. With this fourth installment, the series follows the trend of what should be a horrific ride into the realms of horror and cannibalism turning into a film that thinks it has all the right stuff a horror film has. Except for people that are worth feasting your eyes and interest on for longer than a minute. And, if nothing else, at least the first one has Eliza Dushku.
Rating: 
The Super Network 