"I think we took a wrong turn!" (For those who don't know, that's a quote from the fourth episode of the superior franchise.)
So how is the latest instalment of what is now the malatropic tetralogy? Well, let's just say that coming up with the term "malatropic tetralogy" was the most fun I had watching this movie. Maybe I'm getting old and jaded, but the ill-thought-out details kept bugging me: "I really doubt that motor has enough torque to pull that guy's limbs off," I thought to myself at one point, while eating my dinner no less. Or: "How can that guy still be screaming? He would've gone into shock a long time ago." And so on.
The plot, such as it is, concerns the cliché group of co-eds taking a "wrong turn" on the way to their party cabin, and stumbling across an abandoned sanatorium in the middle of a snowstorm. Of course, it's not that abandoned, as it houses the charming, grunting trio of One-Eye, Three Finger, and Saw-Tooth, inbred cannibal brothers who are the villains of the series. Wrong Turn 4 is a prequel, as they were killed off in instalment number 3. But if you cared, you already knew that.
Of course, such manoeuvres are the stock in trade of the horror film, but they should still be artfully done (e.g. Alien) or plausible (e.g. Aliens). Also fully within genre conventions is Wrong Turn 4's gratuitous nudity, including not one, but two scenes of interracial lesbianism! So what the film lacks in wit and pathos it makes up for with political correctness. Or something.
Wrong Turn 4 is set for release on October 25, which is naturally yet another horror movie cliché -- "just in time for Halloween." But unless you've got a special place in your heart for deformed monosyllabic hillbillies, go watch that other Halloween movie instead. The one called Halloween.
(The one not directed by Rob Zombie.)