A group of friends on a snow mobile excursion take a wrong turn and are forced to find shelter or freeze to death. Fortuitously, they find an abandoned mental hospital to drink, smoke marijuana drugs, have premarital sex, and lastly, take refuge in. The friends build a fire, warm up, and, surprise: start dying. It seems as though the former occupants did not vacate the premises when the hospital closed its doors and they are pissed! They are also blood thirsty, cannibalistic psychopaths.
Going in, I had low expectations for this Wrong Turn prequel and as it turns out, they were completely warranted. While I knew that the likelihood of Wrong Turn 4 being a good film wasn’t high but I was still kind of blown away by just how bad it actually succeeds at being
Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings stars Jennifer Pudavick of Wishmaster 4 and Tenika Davis of Canada’s Next Top Model “fame”. Neither one of them can act, nor can any of their inept costars. This film features an onslaught of poor performances from inexperienced actors and a director that was clearly more interested in adding a film credit to his resume than actually making the kind of movie that horror fans want to see.
The Wrong Turn series is front-loaded with two good entries but when Declan O’Brien took over the directing reins on the third installment, the franchise took a turn for the worse. O’Brien served as both writer and director on Wrong Turn 4. Obrien’s script is stale and his directorial presence is far from remarkable.
The film’s pacing is off from the start: It never succeeds at building any real tension because we don’t care about the paper thin characters and each turn of events is so predictable that it’s impossible to be surprised by anything that happens throughout the course of the film’s 93 minute runtime.
The Wrong Turn franchise already has the distinction of being somewhat of a clone of films like The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but the screenplay for Wrong Turn 4 borrows almost all of its ideas from superior films, not just a loose outline for the core concept. There are obvious plot points that were lifted from the superior slasher film Cold Prey as well as from Tommy Wirkola’s zombie film Dead Snow.
The only positive thing that I can say about Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings is that the effects are very well done. The carnage is definitely above average and the FX team relies primarily on the employment of practical makeup effects. It’s too bad that the film is so indefensibly poor that no amount of stage blood can make up for its ample shortcomings.
Wrong Turn 4 is totally worthy of taking a pass on. I found virtually no redeeming qualities in the film. The script it bad, the acting is really bad, the direction is misguided, and the ideas are not original. If you haven’t yet seen Cold Prey (one of the films that Wrong Turn 4 rips off) watch that instead, you’ll find that it’s a much better way to spend 90 minutes.
Director(s): Declan O’Brien
Writer(s): Declan O’Brien
Stars: Jennifer Pudavick, Tenika Davis, Kaitlyn Wong
Year: 2011
Studio/ Production Co: Summit Entertainment, Constantin Film
Budget: Unknown
Language: English
Length: 93 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Slasher
