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Released by: Fox
Released on: October 25, 2011.
Director: Declan O'Brien
Cast: Jenny Pudavick, Tenika Davis, Kaitlyn Wong, Terra Vnesa
Year: 2011
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The Movie:
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the woods of West Virginia comes the fourth film in the Wrong Turn series, Bloody Beginnings. This one starts off with a pretty nifty prologue sequence in which the director of a sanatorium gives his latest employee a tour of Ward 3 where the most dangerous of the mentally and physically deformed and inbred patients are housed behind the safety of steel jail cell doors. Unfortunately for them and everyone else in the hospital, three very familiar looking patients manage to pick the lock on their cell and open everyone else's door - before you know it the inmates have literally taken over the asylum and that pretty new doctor who just signed on is getting a taste of electroshock therapy, the director himself literally pulled apart.
Cut to modern times where a bunch of hot chicks and a couple of dopey guys are getting ready to head off to a cabin in the hills of West Virginia for some skiing and fun - once the hot lesbians stop having sex, that is. Oh and the hetero couple too - they also have to have sex first. Our horny hombres hit the road, park their SUVs and hop on their Ski-doo's to make their way through the woods but not so surprisingly they, get ready for it… make a wrong turn. A serious snowstorm descends on them and so they opt to take shelter inside the massive old structure just over the horizon. It turns out this massive old structure is the sanatorium that was the location of the massacre that opened the movie and that everyone's three favorite inbred cannibals - Three-Fingers, Saw-Tooth and One-eye - have been using this as a base of operations for some time now and that these three killing machines see the new arrivals as a veritable buffet.
The second film in the series to be directed by Declan O'Brien, this fourth film in the series is on par with Wrong Turn 2 in terms of bloodshed, and by mainstream studio standards (this was a Fox release, don't forget), that's saying something. Bodies are torn into pieces, torsos are power drilled, heads are ripped off multiple times (this movie ranks high on the Decap-O-Meter!) and flesh is literally sliced off, boiled in hot oil and eaten like some fucked up fondue! Throw in not one but two graphic lesbian scenes and a decent guy on girl bit and you've got yourself a boobtastic splatter film that overcomes its formulaic storyline and delivers the goods.
As far as the cast and crew go, all involved show some admirable commitment to their roles. It doesn't matter so much that the guys and girls are all more or less interchangeable - they look good and the scream really loudly so they do just fine with the material. We're not talking Tree Of Life here, kids. The three stuntmen who play the killer cannibals are also good here, and if they don't really have any dialogue, they're physically imposing enough that they succeed in letting their body language do the talking for them.
O'Brien also got very lucky with the location secured for this film. Almost the entire thing is shot in and around the old Brandon Mental Health Centre that lies now partially abandoned two hours outside of Winnipeg in rural Manitoba. This massive structure was built in the early 1900s and abandoned in the 1970s and the cast and crew could not have asked for a more perfect place to shoot their movie - and O'Brien (who notes in the extras that he would re-write parts of the script as he explored more of the old buildings) takes full advantage of it. With all of the old vintage medical equipment still in the buildings, the movie winds up with a pretty authentic feel to it that really helps make it creepier than it would be otherwise.
Made with an obvious streak of black humor, Wrong Turn 4 - Bloody Beginnings doesn't reinvent the slasher wheel nor does it do much to add any originality to the backwoods horror genre but it does offer up gore by the bucket load, a surprising amount of welcome gratuitous nudity and a great location to make for a ridiculously entertaining film.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The AVC encoded 1080p 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen video on this Blu-ray disc is decent enough. The picture is sometimes a little soft and a bit murky in spots, particularly when shooting outside in the snowstorm or when travelling down the dimly lit hallways, but the black levels are generally okay. Fine detail is very obviously a step up from what standard definition offers and color reproduction is strong throughout - so long as you keep in mind that most of this movie takes place at night and a lot of it also takes place indoors with low lighting.
The primary mix is an English language DTS-HD 5.1 mix with subtitles available in English SDH, French and Spanish. Again, this is a noticeable improvement over a standard definition release. The DTS-HD mix opens up the audio a bit and fills the room quite nicely. This isn't a reference quality surround mix but it's a nice effort that uses the rears to build atmosphere and help out in the jump scares department. The lower front end is pretty solid, you'll notice this in the scenes where the snowmobiles fire up, and the film's levels are consistently well balanced with clean, clear dialogue throughout.
Writer/director Declan O'Brien provides a fun commentary track that sheds some light into his creative process and where he wanted to go with this film - he's got an obvious love and enthusiasm not only for this franchise but for horror and splatter movies in general and it comes through in this talk. He also talks quite a bit about the location that they used for the film and shares some interesting stories about that place and the weather conditions that they had to deal with. He covers effects, casting, gratuitous sex and gore and more and he does so with a good sense of humor.
There are also a couple of featurettes here, the first a decent fifteen minute making of bit that has cast and crew interviews coupled with behind the scenes footage. It's fun to see the cast all enjoying themselves here and it's interesting to hear from the three stunt men who play the trio of killer cannibals in the movie about the make up process and gore effects. Lifestyles Of The Sick And Infamous is a five minute piece that gives us a bit of history on the abandoned mental hospital that the film was shot at before letting the cast and crew talk about how simultaneously awesome and creepy it was to be out there shooting a movie in such a place. There are also seven minutes worth of 'Director's Die-aries' included here, basically just quick little shot on video bits that O'Brien shot during the production showing off the snowmobile scenes, some of the stunt work, the locations and more.
Rounding out the extras are a few minutes of deleted scenes (including a bit more of the prologue sequence and some more character development bits and even a bit more with the cannibals) and a music video for the song that plays over the end credits by The Blackout City Boys - it's pretty goofy. Animated menus and chapter stops are included and a few promo spots play before the main menu loads. This is being released as a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack, the contents of the DVD mirroring the Blu-ray disc, and the keepcase comes housed inside a nice slipcase cover.
The Final Word:
There's nothing wrong with sticking to a formula if the result is a movie as trashy and fun as Wrong Turn 4. As gory as anything a mainstream studio has put out in some time and chock full of gratuitous nudity, this is a fun throwback and a gleefully exploitative film that delivers a lot more entertainment than it probably should have. Fox's Blu-ray/DVD combo release looks and sounds pretty good and contains a few worthwhile extras too - a solid release overall and a must own for fans of the first three films.
NOTE: The screen caps below are from the DVD, not the Blu-ray - Fox has encrypted the Blu-ray disc with some wacky copy protection that the R!S!P! super computer can't get past, so blame them.
