Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

By 2011, the "torture porn" boom initiated by Saw and Hostel was starting to lose its luster, replaced by the found-footage craze of Paranormal Activity. Yet, in the dusty corners of the direct-to-DVD market, the Wrong Turn franchise was still chugging along like a rusty tow truck fueled by pure, unadulterated grue. Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings is the cinematic equivalent of a gas station burrito—you know it’s probably going to hurt later, but at 2:00 AM, it hits a very specific, greasy spot.

I watched this during a weekend blizzard while my apartment’s radiator was clanking like a ghost in a Victorian novel, which honestly provided a better 4D experience than anything Regal Cinemas was offering at the time. The film takes the franchise’s signature hillbilly cannibals—Three Finger, Saw Tooth, and One Eye—and hauls them back to their origins in a snowy, desolate sanatorium. It’s a prequel that answers questions nobody was really asking, but it does so with such a high level of mean-spirited enthusiasm that it’s hard not to respect the hustle.

A Cold Day in Hell

The movie kicks off in 1974 at the Glensville Sanatorium, where we see the "deformed" brothers during their youth. Naturally, a riot breaks out—because what’s a 70s asylum movie without a riot?—and the boys escape. Fast forward to 2003 (the year the original film was released), and we meet a group of college students who, in classic slasher fashion, get lost in a snowstorm while snowmobiling. They find the now-abandoned sanatorium and decide to hunker down for the night.

I’ll give director Declan O'Brien credit for the location. They filmed at the abandoned Brandon Mental Health Centre in Manitoba, and you can feel the genuine chill coming off those concrete walls. It’s an oppressive, grey, and cavernous setting that elevates the film above the usual "woods at night" aesthetic of its predecessors. Michael Marshall’s cinematography leans into the desaturation, making the inevitable splashes of bright red gore pop with a stylized, almost comic-book intensity.

The Art of the Kill

Let’s be honest: you aren't here for the nuanced character arcs of Jennifer Pudavick or Tenika Davis. The cast members are essentially walking steaks, existing solely to be tenderized by the cannibals. The characters are so aggressively stupid that you’ll find yourself cheering for the cannibals to finish them off before they can make another bad decision. Whether it’s deciding to separate in a dark hallway or failing to finish off a killer when they have the chance, these kids are the Olympic champions of poor survival instincts.

But the "Wrong Turn" series has always been about the practical effects, and Bloody Beginnings doesn't skimp. This was a period where CGI was starting to take over even low-budget horror, but Declan O'Brien (who also directed Wrong Turn 3 and 5) mostly sticks to his guns with physical prosthetics. There is a "fondue" scene involving a living victim and a blowtorch that is genuinely hard to watch—and I say that as someone who grew up on a steady diet of Tom Savini's greatest hits. It’s nasty, imaginative, and perfectly captures the "DVD-era" philosophy: if you can’t be good, be gross.

Retro-Direct-to-Video

Looking back, Wrong Turn 4 captures that weird transitional era of horror. It lacks the grainy, filmic texture of the 2003 original, feeling much more like a "digital" production, yet it retains that 90s slasher energy where the kills are the primary attraction. It’s a relic of a time when you could still make a decent living selling physical discs at Best Buy based solely on a cool cover and a recognizable brand name.

The score by Claude Foisy does a lot of the heavy lifting, using screeching strings that feel like a nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s not subtle, but subtlety died about ten minutes into the first Wrong Turn. This movie is about the crunch of bone and the squelch of organs, and in that regard, it delivers exactly what it promises on the box. It’s a nihilistic, snowy romp that doesn't care about your feelings, and sometimes, that’s exactly what a horror fan needs on a cold Tuesday night.

If you’re looking for high-brow horror, look elsewhere. This is a movie where the villains literally eat their way through the cast while the survivors scream in rooms full of medical waste. It’s messy, it’s often dumb, and the ending is a masterclass in "wait, really?" cynicism. But for those of us who miss the days of browsing the horror aisle and picking the movie with the most disturbing tagline, Wrong Turn 4 is a fun, frostbitten trip down a very dark memory lane. Just don't expect to feel good about yourself once the credits roll.