Wrong Turn Quadrilogy Review

Wrong Turn inhabits that lonely region in the DVD shop, films that you are nearly positive that you have seen but can’t be sure. The DVD back cover sure sounds familiar, but even when pressed you can’t bring up a single scene or sequence to prove to yourself that you’ve actually seen it.

Now the only reason – and I mean ‘only reason’ – that I am even bothering here is that I saw that a series so worryingly unnecessary has somehow managed to bluff its way to a fourth film. This lead me to wonder in the DVD aisle just how many ‘Wrong Turns’ are required before the directionless unfortunate finds his/her way out of the hillbilly woods?

A moment’s chuckle at that lame joke thereafter impelled me to waste some 7 hours of my life watching all 4 Wrong Turns. Now I sincerely wish I had never thought of the lame joke in the first place…

The reason behind the success, quality… adequacy of the series is its adherence to the formula. We all know cannibalism is bad. We all think hillbillies are menacing and potentially dangerous even when they boast all their original teeth and both sides of the overall bib are buckled. We have all heard jokes about the inbreeding.

It’s a join the dots exercise from there.

So when you already have inbred cannibal hillbillies ready to go the obvious next ingredient is annoying, vacuous yet aesthetically pleasing teens to placate said hideous deformed killers. Churn through a batch and see how things (wrong) turn out. If enough viewers rent the DVD it’s simply a matter of rinse; repeat.

Four times it seems.

Wrong Turn

The original low key flick follows the formula to the letter. Practically invents it in fact. Attractive young people break down in the wrong area, then approach the wrong homestead for assistance.

We know what happens from here.

Half way through the second film I identified a sameness that was somehow welcoming, within minutes I realised that instead of writing the same review four times we should embrace the familiarity and instead of panning the same conventions reward the better realised moments that proliferate the original flick and all subsequent sequels.

Total bodycount: Around 6 or 7 – I kinda lost count but it was definitely sub 10.

Most deserving of his/her fate: Without doubt the hippie idiot with clear sunglasses who just thinks everyone should ‘chilllll’. Thankfully he cops it early.

Goriest kill: Wearing braces is likely very uncomfortable at the best of times. I would venture braces made from barbed wire are even more unpleasant.

Best kill: This film wasn’t as gung-ho with the over-the-toppery but an axe to the face from point blank is always effective.

Most bizarre moment: For me it was that the ‘good guy hero’ was an even blander than the real version Jeremy Piven – with hair though…

Dumbest line: “Come on motherfuckers. JUST DIE!!”

Hottest chick: Eliza Dushku without doubt, which also brings in the inevitable frustration that the top ranking celeb in the cast (in this case a former child star C grade actress) never removes the tank top.

Despite being as instantly forgettable as an LMFAO track without the hook Wrong Turn is bizarrely entertaining as it runs. There isn’t much originality aside from the basic premise and the gore isn’t anything to write home about, but you could do – and I have done – a lot worse with a low budget horror flick.

Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. Totally unnecessary, almost worthwhile. Would never have thought it would justify three sequels though…

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End

What’s the only thing more deserving of a hillbilly hurtin’ than brain dead teens in tank tops? Brain dead teens in tank tops appearing on reality TV, that’s what!

Genius.

The annoyance factor with dealing with the reality TV aspirants is that every moment that takes place prior to their evisceration demands that they talk just like reality TV morons, leading to the viewer taking more punishment than any superhuman inbred Freddy or Jason could ever dish out.

But when they do finally cop it there can be no such thing as ‘too violent’, leading to yet another film where there is some real ambiguity in just who are supposed to be the real bad guys.

Total bodycount: Maybe 10 this time, but not much more.

Most deserving of his/her fate: Again a clear winner loser of this award; the ‘X-treme’ sports guy who thinks he is funny. (I often wonder if the actors who play these types ever chuckle at their effort. Then I sincerely hope for the sake of human-kind in general that none do.)

Goriest kill: At first glance an exploding hillbilly made more of a mess, but …

Best kill: … a young woman being cleaved in two and being dragged leaving two separate snail trails takes some beating.

Most bizarre moment: This is the film that gleefully embraced the lunacy of the premise. If it wasn’t the mutated inbred siblings making out to excess it could very well be the mutant Eraserhead birth, complete with way more effluvia than should ever be necessary.

Dumbest line: Anything the X-treme douche utters is Grade A aural agony.

Hottest chick: Not hotter, but nakeder. That helps.

The first film was more serious and straightforward, which was eventually its downfall. The sequel openly acknowledges just how doofy this stuff is and takes it to the edge of plausibility and way beyond. The first five minutes scream bland and pointless, but hang around and embrace the silliness.

Final Rating – 7 / 10. Wrong Turn 2 is by no means good, but by ratcheting everything that made the first decent by just a notch, including nudity, gore, makeup and the creativity of the kills, you just might have the most fun and most unexpectedly entertaining horror efforts in years.

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead

It’s strange, but even though all the familiar ingredients are neatly in place it’s usually pretty easy to spot an uncreative rip off. For mine that’s what we have here with Wrong Turn 3.

That said you know that they’re flogging a dead horse all the way to the bank when the opening scene in the film is the double point score tittie-gore combo crowd pleaser.

In a dramatic change from the first two films the endless fodder for inbred execution here is a busload of hardened criminals. If you thought that they could massacre dim witted teens guilt free and reality TV morons wait till you see what they do with them!

Total bodycount: With so many criminals  a-hankerin’ for a hillbilly head-huntin’ this one easily tops out in the early teens.

Most deserving of his/her fate: A skinny red-headed, big mouthed car thief. He never shuts up, and unfortunately blahs his way until well into the film’s second half.

Goriest kill: Impalement seems to be the theme here, but oh the dodgy CGI!

Best kill: After being snapped up in a barbed wire net and towed away, having your body abraded away by the bitumen road might be a trifle unnecessary.

Most bizarre moment: A Hannibal-esque live brain tasting. Who said hillbilly cannibals have no taste for the finer things?

Dumbest line: The endless macho posturing of the lead bad guy gets very grating after a short while.

Hottest chick: It’s tidy but brief… until the bare boobie becomes ventilated by an arrow.

As the second film was elevated by an across the board improvement in all areas so too does Left for Dead suffer by a uniform reduction in quality, exacerbated by the obvious budgetary restrictions. The CGI in particular is especially cheap and tacky, which wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for the fact that they rely on it to enhance almost every kill in the film.

Instead it hurts things big time.

The cannibals are more deformed, more aggressive and decidedly more proactive – which should please their employers – they set up traps, plot and scheme and when all else fails launch full frontal attacks on the unwitting victims.

Final Rating – 6 / 10. It’s not totally terrible and really I could be more forgiving, but this film clearly misses that one little intangible that made the first two oddly watchable.

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

Surely by now we don’t even need a premise? We know that after 10 or 15 minutes the deformed killers will show and start tearing limbs off people. I would be happy by now with an opening caption simply saying “Some people go into the woods…”

What’s wrong with a formula that only demands 90 minutes from the audience, an audience that knows in advance they’ll see some skin, some gore and a bit of canni-snacking.

But the filmmakers behind Wrong Turn 4, they care… about your money. What to do when the teens, reality TV idiots and crims are all dead? More teens of course. But this time make them a while lot nakeder…

So we get a pointless ‘origins’ story that tells us nothing at all if you think about it aside from the three cannibal brothers are extremely dangerous and lacking in any sense of right and wrong. What it does though is justify the most violent and gory sequence in any of the four films.

Does that make it better? Not one bit, but when we know when the ideas bin is exhausted ramp up the gore and skin.

After the comically simple escape from a so-called ‘secure’ psychiatric hospital the facility remains totally deserted for decades until…

… a bunch of sex mad – awful acting – ski bunnies show up to get stranded amid a convenient snowstorm.

Wonder what happens next?

Total bodycount: Ten or so once again. If you expected different you haven’t been reading.

Most deserving of his/her fate: Just… all of them. For crimes against even average low budget horror movie acting.

Goriest kill: Did you know that if you pull hard enough arms and legs simply fall off? I didn’t either until I saw this enlightening film.

Best kill: Let me just say, if someone is hanging from a barbed wire noose, perhaps grabbing her legs and pulling hard might not be the best long term solution.

Most bizarre moment: An overlong, unnecessary, Hostel style living body buffet

Dumbest line: “They probably turned Porter into a Porterhouse by now!” (It was a stroke of genius to name that character Porter. High five!)

Hottest chick: Kudos for the multi-cultural mixed bag of nudity – especially the lesbian couple – but once you get to the third sequel it’s fair to say the Grade A chickies have long since stopped attending the casting calls.

In essence Bloody Beginnings eschews everything that made the first couple films decent, it’s like the lousy third film failed because it strayed too far from the formula and the filmmaker (same guy who made ‘3’ by the way) ignored the fact that he made a sucky film and blamed the formula again.

So this film is a lazy stereotypical slasher flick – not even a good one – meaning many scenes that call for ‘let’s split up and look around’, padded either side by more gore in lieu of genuine creativity and entertainment.

Final Rating – 5 / 10. So very out of ideas. At one point in the early goings a character even says ‘I’m sure he took a wrong turn’… Well after 2 the filmmakers sure did, now they’re so lost I don’t even think this franchise is worth looking for.

Let the hillbillies have ‘em.

Stop Press! Amazingly enough despite the most recent episode being less than 6 months from release (in Australia anyway), Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines is already available on DVD. And in true workmanlike fashion I went ahead and made an online purchase – knowing full well it wouldn’t be pretty.

Here is the result: Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (Review)

After all that cannibalism, I kinda feel like a salad.

In Summary: Realistically just how bad are these inbred hillbilly cannibals? So far they’ve taken down teens, bad actors and actresses, criminals and ski-bunnies. What is the world actually missing here?

In all honesty like The Prophecy flicks the first couple films were quite good and the last couple god-awful (by comparison) deliberate, calculated cash-ins only there thanks to name familiarity.

They’re enough like the first couple to look similar, but do we really need them? (No!)

But name another franchise with sequels made with a $17 budget and a cast of no names where you continually ignore the evidence and unthinkingly plonk down another $5 for the DVD? I mean you can’t. The two ‘stars’ in this series are Eliza Dushku (who by that stage wasn’t even famous anyway) and Henry Rollins!

For my money, watch the first, enjoy the second and ignore the third and fourth.

OGR

About OGR

While I try to throw a joke or two into proceedings when I can all of the opinions presented in my reviews are genuine. I don't expect that all will agree with my thoughts at all times nor would it be any fun if you did, so don't be shy in telling me where you think I went wrong... and hopefully if you think I got it right for once. Don't be shy, half the fun is in the conversation after the movie.
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