The next four films rank among some of my favorite sequels. They amp up the story, the setting, the nudity, and the gore. They truly find their rhythm and figure out who they are and what they do well. Nothing pisses me off more than a franchise that doesn’t know who it is halfway through its run, and tonally flip flops through each ensuing sequel (I’m looking at you, Child’s Play).
Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)
Synopsis:
A group of college students gets lost in a storm during their snowmobiling trip and takes shelter in an abandoned sanitarium which, unbeknown to them, is home to deformed cannibals.
IMDb: 4.5
Rotten Tomatoes: 57%
Tagline: These hillbillies are going crazy!
Declan O’Brien returns to write and direct this entry, a prequel to the series. Being an even number, this is one of the more memorable ones for me, taking place in the snow at an abandoned sanatorium. Plus, this is the third and final one to be filmed in Canada, so no terrible accents.
My first question is, why is there a setting on the electroshock therapy machine that lights your hair on fire? Or makes your eyeballs explode? Ever notice in a horror movie, when you crank up the machine, it always does one or the other? Are we supposed to believe that setting exists? What is the practical use of that much voltage?
After the prologue, we get two simultaneous slow jam love making scenes shown in full longform view. The slow jam nature of the lovemaking lets us know that these people are in love, and this is not just some one-night stand love making. And wait! Plot twist! One couple is of the lesbian variety! And all four couples are bumping uglies in the same dorm room! Wow! So many people in love in one locale!
After everyone has their dose of Vitamin Oh, we get the full cast of annoying college kids snowmobiling off to the abandoned insane asylum where inbred redneck cannibalistic killers are awaiting, all while listening to generic 2000’s alternative music!
I forgot to look at the nude people’s faces, so I don’t know if the nice girl was naked or not. It’s hard to try and figure out the final girl, so I’m a bit at a loss here. I mean, slutty naked girls don’t generally make it through the movie. And lesbians are a total no on the likelihood of survival. I may have to go back and rewatch that love scene later….
The girls all look the right age, are attractive and not bitchy. Their nudity was welcome, and I wasn’t even annoyed by it at all. The guys, though, are total horny himbos, and one even looks like he is 40, while another has a Justin Bieber haircut which automatically makes me hate him.
If I have a complaint, it’s that the characters make the dumbest available decision. They are completely stupid. Their logic is asinine. Every choice they make has me wondering if they are human, or some kind of pretty person genetically manipulated and biologically engineered in a lab buried beneath the North Pole.
I love the setting. I love the origin story, although I’m not sure it vibes continuity wise. I love the practical effects. The acting is pretty good, for the first time in a few sequels. It has its moments of terror. If I was a betting man, I would bet this is a totally different director than Wrong Turn 3. Thankfully, I am not, because I’d lose money.
5.5/10 Stab Wounds
Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012)
Synopsis:
A group of college students, on a trip to the Mountain Man Festival on Halloween in West Virginia, encounter a clan of cannibals.
IMDb: 4.1
Rotten Tomatoes: 18%
Tagline: The inbred hillbillies are back!
Declan O’Brien returns to write and direct, with Doug Bradley (Hellraiser) appearing in this one. The movie marked a return to Bulgaria, after shooting in Canada for the last entry. It is a sequel to 4.
Per the usual, we start off with a sex scene, and unlike the last movie, it’s not a slow jam lovemaking session. We get a straight up humping where she says, “I love you,” and he just keeps making his pre-oh face.
They try to get the backwoods festival over by dropping names like Coachella and Burning Man, but we all know Redneckfest 2013 is not on that level. It’s laughable at best. But it is apparently popular enough for the mountain men to show up to the party, and the bad CGI killings start again, complete with a black-ish blood and missing fingers.
We meet Pinhead, and there is no way in the world that he’s gonna be a good guy, and the lame twist happens pretty quickly, apparently re-writing their origin story once again, or at least saying “fuck it, who cares?” to their dark past. I mean, did they come back to West Virigina from the cold snowy mountains of wherever the hell they were in the last sequel, the actual prequel? Am I thinking too much about this shit?
Just the look alone screams, “Back in Bulgaria!” While I applauded the director in the last one, he sure fucks it up again in this one. The story is uninspired, the effects and kills are a step back in quality (I did like the girl who was forced to eat her own intestines), the kids are back to being average in attractiveness, and they’re annoying horny druggies.
I hate Bradley as a bad guy, abusing the mountain men, thus, making them sympathetic. Their revolt is telegraphed a mile away. His acting is truly not on the level we expect, but then again, no one else is, either.
Plus, I don’t like the cops. They’re too clean cut and happy, considering they are ass deep in Redneckpalooza. They are nowhere near believable as agents of the law.
The mountain man makeup is not good. They look like cheap masks and don’t really fit in with their natural skin. If they didn’t have so many damn closeups of them, we wouldn’t notice it, but the director is fascinated with bragging about his poor effects for whatever reason.
And why is there a guitar solo similar to the “Star Spangled Banner” played when the guy is getting his legs broken by sledgehammers?
It’s just not good. It’s boring. It’s stupid. The actors are miscast. The effects suck. Characters again have terrible logic and make dumb fuck unbelievable decisions. It just isn’t worth the watch.
4.0/10 Stab Wounds
Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014)
Synopsis:
An inheritance leads a young man and his friends to an abandoned resort inhabited by two sketchy caretakers and a clan of mutant cannibals.
IMDb: 4.1
Rotten Tomatoes: 19%
Tagline: The family needs new blood
An even numbered sequel, this movie is also one of them that I enjoy. Bulgarian filmmaker Valeri Milev, who can barely speak English himself, continues the trend of filming in the European country, with the film serving as the first reboot of the series. To celebrate, every female actress in the film gets naked, exhibiting the most nudity of any movie in the franchise. One of them even looks a lot like Snooki!
Interesting sidebar: An actual missing poster is shown onscreen in the background of a shot, of a woman who had been found dead mere days after being reported missing. A subsequent lawsuit was filed in Ireland, forcing 20th Century Fox to recall all DVDs, and Blu-Rays, while also pulling the film from streaming services. It’s since been corrected.
Again, we open with a sex scene, and let me tell you, this could be the most attractive Bulgarian woman in the history of cinema, paired with the luckiest and nerdiest dude with a questionable accent of his own. Good on the mountain men for killing them both.
Yes. There are bad CGI effects. But there are really great practical ones as well. It’s a mixture of both. Since it’s a reboot, the mountain men look a bit different, and there are a few new ones (ones who are attractive and speak like high society), but their makeup is decently done, if not a tiny bit rubbery and mask-ey.
We have even re-written the origin of the mountain men once again. Now they have something to do with a resort and hot springs. A resort, mind you, that has peeling paint, messed up walls, the atmosphere of Dracula’s castle, and looking straight out of an East European country.
The group of kids are, once again, annoying, perverted, horny, and all too eager to get nude and hump. But really, that’s what this franchise has become. Nudity, gore, and bad decisions. One would think with a reboot, things might change, but really, this is just more of the same and could have been another pointless sequel. Nothing more than middle of the pack.
4.5/10 Stab Wounds
Wrong Turn (2021)
Synopsis:
Friends hiking the Appalachian Trail are confronted by ‘The Foundation’, a community of people who have lived in the mountains for hundreds of years.
IMDb: 5.5
Rotten Tomatoes: 65%
Tagline: This land is their land
The second reboot in the series, this marks the first film to be filmed in the United States and was the first theatrical release since the original. Originally titled Wrong Turn: The Foundation, Mike P. Nelson directed the movie and planned it for release in 2020, but the COVID epidemic delayed it by one year. It is intended to be the first in a new trilogy of films.
This also marked the return of some credible actors to the franchise. Emma Dumont (Oppenheimer), Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket), and Bill Sage (We Are What We Are) have roles in the film.
I feel like this is a legitimate attempt to make a realistic version of Wrong Turn. Long gone are the three mutant backwoods killers. It looks professionally done, as opposed to the B movies that the others unapologetically are. I wonder if it would have been more appropriate to name it something else. Or perhaps, leave “The Foundation” with the title, at least distinguishing it as something different. Sure, it’s a remake, but it’s cut completely from a different cloth.
It truly looks like a theatrical release, and had COVID not come along, and the theater going experience was the same as pre-2020, it could have possibly made 8-10 million dollars in my estimation. Instead, I think it will get lost in the annals of history, not fitting in with the other sequels, and not being good enough to stand out from the pack. Should they ever get around to making the other parts to this “new” trilogy, that opinion might change.
You can definitely tell it’s the 2020s and intended for a wider audience, for it’s got gay characters, a Hispanic character, an Indian guy, and an interracial couple, pretty much covering every base. If the two girls made out, we might hit the jackpot and make everyone feel included. The group encounters racism, too, so we get the feeling that this movie is making a stand against prejudice. Yay, horror! The most diverse genre of movies!
At 109 minutes, it’s a little long. It has like 3 codas, never truly ending, and overstaying its welcome a bit. The effects are fine, and the performances are fine, but it just feels like it belongs in a different franchise. We get it, West Virginia is full of redneck backwoods killers who hate diverse groups of young people. But it’s truly just an average film. Kind of vanilla. Devoid of anything new. A little bit soul-less.
I kind of miss Bulgaria.
5.0/10 Stab Wounds
My final ranking for the series: 1, 4, Wrong Turn ‘21, 6, 2, 5, 3. They truly are hit or miss. Quality is all over the map, mostly depending on where they were filmed. The Bulgarian ones feel cheap and truly look nowhere near West Virginia.
