The film starts off in 1974 at the Glenville Sanatorium. As the facility's head doctor shows the inmates off to a new psychiatrist, we learn a bit of the history behind the trio of cannibals that are the focus of the series. We learn that the three brothers, dubbed Three Finger, One Eye and Saw Tooth, were found in the woods apparently feasting on the remains of what the doctors believe to be their parents. As a result of the heavy inbreeding, the trio is not only horribly, physically deformed, but they also don't feel pain. To make matters worse, they are also very intelligent, even though they only speak in grunts, their own personal language.
As you might expect, it isn't long before they not only find a way out of their cell, but let loose the rest of the inmates. As the crowd of crazies take over the sanatorium, our three killers decide to express their sadistic tendencies on the doctor and psychiatrist.
The film then jumps ahead to 2003, just before the events of the original Wrong Turn, I would presume. A collection of college kids head up to a cabin for their Winter break, only to get lost along the way and stumble upon the now, apparently deserted Glenville Sanatorium. With a blizzard raging outside, they take to the large building in hopes of a fire and a place to sleep. What they don't realize is that the three cannibals still live here.
Wrong Turn 4 fits in with the rest of the movies really well. There is a lot of blood, extreme deaths, and even a fondue scene while the victim is still alive on the table (needless to say, this movie isn't for the weak of stomach or heart), but where it falters is in the collection of kids that are being hunted by the bad guys. Where Wrong Turn 3 broke away from the pattern by throwing adult convicts at the cannibals, Bloody Beginnings falls back into the formula by providing fairly generic college students in the way to become little more than cannon fodder for the killers.
I don't know if the problem is that the characters just aren't interesting enough, or the fact that there are nine of them so none get any real character development time. As it was, only a few of the characters stood out enough to be noteworthy. Daniel (Dean Armstrong) is a stick-in-the-mud who thinks about safety first, and then there is the lesbian couple. Quite frankly, while the fact that they are a lesbian couple sticks out, I had to go back and look up what the characters were called, so even that point of differentiation doesn't really do a lot to develop those characters too much. For those wondering, this Unrated version does come with a couple of scenes involving this couple, Sara (Tenika Davis) and Bridget (Kaitlyn Wong). As for everyone else, I couldn't really tell you what happened to Kenia (Jennifer Pudavick) versus Lauren (Ali Tataryn), Jenna (Terra Vnesa) or Claire (Samantha Kendrick). As for the guys, while Daniel stands out a bit, Kyle (Victor Zinck) and Vincent (Sean Skene) are essentially the same character, and don't even get me started on trying to remember which guys are dating which girls. They all might as well be blank dolls waiting to get murdered by Three Finger, Saw Tooth and One Eye. While there would have been fewer deaths and less gore with a smaller group, at least the characters would have been a bit better developed.
The special features on Bloody Beginnings are interesting at least. One is a behind-the-scenes taping that spans the shows 19 days of filming, while the other two featurettes talk about putting together the film and finding the location for the Glenville Sanatorium. As it turns out, they took over an actual abandoned sanatorium and much of the equipment used in the movie was items they found laying around, including an electo-shock treatment table.
Let's face it, if you've been following the Wrong Turn films, then you know what to expect. While I'm disappointed in the lack of character development for the victims, they are just that, victims. They are merely the excuse to show a few new interesting ways the mutated hillbillies can kill. So for those of you looking to see some new bloody slasher scenes, you've found the right film. For the rest of you though, you will probably want to skip Wrong Turn 4, as it's simply designed for its following and doesn't attempt to garner any new fans.
