I was not a fan of 2003’s Wrong Turn. It was an example of a horror film that exhibited everything the excellent fan of Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, a direct-to-DVD sequel that never took itself too seriously and by doing so allowed the audience the opportunity to have a little more fun at the gore and mayhem rather than taking the opportunity to just be gross.
However, I never watched 2009’s [amazon asin=”B002G1WPG8″ text=”Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead“]. I can’t remember if I ever received a screener or if I even asked for one, but when Fox Home Entertainment brought that film’s director, Declan O’Brien, back to write and direct a fourth film I felt I might as well give it a shot. After all, I thought that first teaser poster was pretty great.
This fourth installment begins by going all the way back to 1974 were the film’s inbred West Virginia mountain men aren’t running around the woods cannibalizing innocent passersby just yet. Instead they’re in a hospital along with fellow members of the population that are deformed and troubled as a result of either “birth defects or inbreeding.”
As we’re told by the good doctor at the beginning of the film, not only are they mentally ill, but they have a very high tolerance for pain as a result of “an advanced form of congenital analgesia,” which is “more prevalent in homogenous societies.” Suffice to say, I was hooked by those few stupid lines.
Once again, the franchise was taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to the material and even though it looked incredibly cheap, I knew it was just the silly set up I was looking for as some young kids are sure to enter the picture soon enough to become dinner for these crazy gentlemen.
So as the opening moments play out, fans of the franchise will learn how Saw-Tooth, One-Eye and Three Finger got their names and how they escaped the hospital that was trying to treat them to go on to become the creepy cannibals they are today.
The story movies from 1974 to 2003 as we peek in on a sex scene O’Brien can only laugh at in the film’s making of documentary, as he admits he realizes introducing the audience to the film’s young characters with not only a straight sex scene, but also a lesbian sex scene will help ramp up the testosterone. Yes, this film plays by all the horror rules Scream described for us and then some.
This group of kids soon head out for a bit of snowmobiling and ultimately end up stranded in a snow storm with the hospital from the film’s opening becoming their only source of refuge. From there on out, blood and mayhem take over.
A spectacular neck-stretching by barbed wire and a bit of “eat-’em-alive” fondue really set the tone and it got me to thinking how it’s fascinating with horror films how important it is, with violence such as this, to walk that line between gratuitous and “so silly it’s entertaining.” I’ll be the first to admit it’s almost impossible to describe where the line can, or should, be drawn, but casting a bunch of bad actors willing to scream and writhe around whether it’s a sex scene or a torture scene is a good start.
I also watched the brief making of featurette and if you want an indication of just what kind of low budget project this is, it was shot in 19 days in the Winnipeg snow and I didn’t recognize a single one of the actors. Yet, it’s a perfectly fine direct-to-DVD horror feature where silly kills are the order of the day as a group of sex-addicted kids are led to the slaughter. I’m not sure I would say it’s a film you need to buy, but a rental wouldn’t hurt.
If you did want to buy it you can click either of these links to order the [amazon asin=”B005GT3X68″ text=”DVD”] or [amazon asin=”B005GT3XDQ” text=”Blu-ray”] from Amazon and I have included the trailer directly below. You can also watch the NSFW franchise trailer here.
QUICK NOTE: I’m not going to comment on the quality of the image as I was only sent a check disc and not the actual DVD or Blu-ray.
