Horror Movie Review: Wrong Turn 4 – Bloody Beginnings (2011)

It had to go wrong didn’t it? Studios just don’t know or care when people have had their fill of a certain thing. Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings sees the series take a nose-dive as it takes several hundred steps backwards. Incredibly disappointing.

While the first movie may not be a classic it was entertaining enough (read our review here). It was then bettered in every aspect by the sequel, Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (read the review for that movie here) before the third movie continued the good trend. While it wasn’t as good as the second movie it was still very entertaining & showed imagination (read our review of that one here).

You see what made the first three movies memorable was that they used three different sets of characters with different motivations for being in the woods of West Virginia. While the basic plot was always the same, it felt different because of the different characters & how they behaved!

Clearly the idea well had dried up for Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings. It’s the sign of a desperate studio when they turn to the past. This fourth instalment is a prequel to the first movie & shows the origins of Three Finger, Saw Tooth and One Eye.

Opening in 1974 at the Glensville Sanatorium in West Virginia, we see the three young mutants stage a bloody & violent breakout. The rest of the patients are released & the staff murdered in graphic fashion.

Fast-forward 29 years to a sex scene between two couples. I can’t think of a worse way to introduce characters as it has absolutely nothing to do with the story. It’s pure titillation & about as convincing as 4 planks of wood being banged together.

These 4 are part of a group of 9 college kids (huge cast means plenty of death but bugger all character development) who go snowmobiling on their way to their friend Porter’s cabin in the mountains.

During a snowstorm they get lost (taking a…wrong turn) & end up at the asylum where they are forced to take shelter. Unfortunately for them but fortunately for us the cannibals are still living inside. How have they survived for 29 years in an abandoned asylum deep in the mountains? ‘Cause they’re hunters. No seriously, that’s the explanation given by one of the characters later in the movie.

One of the group tells the story of the cannibals having heard it from her brother but naturally no-one believes her. Surprisingly though it’s not until the next day that the group actually come under attack from the cannibalistic family! They try to escape via their snowmobiles but find them sabotaged & they’re too far up the mountain to just make a run for it.

What follows is at least gleefully gory with a strangulation via barbed wire a particular high point.

Unfortunately that’s all this movie has going for it, lots of violence & gore. The blood flies & most of the time it looks great. What isn’t so great is the paper-thin plot, the awful & forgettable characters & the sub-standard acting.

All you’re going to remember at the end of Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings are a handful of deaths. The story is completely devoid of entertainment & the final scene that links it into the first movie just comes across pointless.

We seen it all before. Not just in the Wrong Turn movies but in horror overall. Going in expecting originality would be a huge mistake but at least well written, motivated characters would be something.

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings proves that too much of a good thing can turn it bad. This is a series that should have stopped after the third. There’s nothing to be told or added. The only thing that Bloody Beginnings can attain to be is gory. Hardly a major selling point.