A nearly-forgotten Canadian rock band from the ’80s called Eight Seconds once declared in a tune “Your voice is for calling my name, and I shall return.” Sadly, some low-budget horror movie producer somewhere evidently heard someone say “Oh, I took a wrong turn” one day and completely misconstrued Eight Seconds’ words — thus unleashing yet another god-awful entry in a line of direct-to-video shitfests that no one ever asked for in the first place. Yes, although the Wrong Turn series had already reached its nadir long ago with its initial entry, we’re still getting assaulted every year with more of ’em.
This time ’round, the producers of the Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines have cast a stalwart figure from the direct-to-video genre — the one and only Doug Bradley, who has undoubtedly been seeking refuge since the Hellraiser franchise recast his part in their unending lineage of made-for-home-video features. For those of you unfamiliar with the Wrong Turn series, it brings us the gory history of a cannibalistic clan of inbred, mutated freaks in West Virginia. With the oh-so-moronic splatterfest Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings, the series took that inevitable wrong turn so many film franchises go down, and brought us a prequel — completely ignoring the concepts of continuity or common sense.
Here, we get another prequel: a sequel to the previously-mentioned prequel, in fact. Mr. Bradley plays the seemingly-normal (appearance-wise) father of the three mutant killers, who winds up in a jail cell on the eve of a massive small-town Halloween party. This, of course, results in his kin comin’ to his rescue — killing everyone that wanders into their path in the process. And, since we all know these characters were alive and well in the first couple of films, it’s extremely unlikely that they’ll be killed in this entry, right? Right. Fortunately, none of the “good guys” (Camilla Arfwedson, Simon Ginty, Roxanne McKee) in this made-in-Bulgaria horror film are worth seeing survive.
Sadly, however, the entire bloody torture porn film — which is laced with some prety poor special effects and even less-impressive performances by all — isn’t worth seeing one bit, unless you enjoy hearing how many times Doug Bradley can use the word “fuck,” I suppose (and he says it a lot here). As Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment sent me a screening copy of this forgettable flick, I really cannot say much about the overall A/V aspects of this release (of course, the less said, the better with me), and the disc I received was of the barebones variety possessing nothing more than a few trailers and promos for other horror-related titles from Fox — meaning no supplemental materials related to the feature film in question itself.
Thank God for small miracles, eh?
