Horror sequels make a habit of ramping things up to the point of ridiculousness: compare the simplicity of Wrong Turn to the excess of its sequel, or how Prom Night shifts from a garden-variety slasher to a supernatural romp. The Collection is a sequel to the almost-plausible The Collector, which began by carefully establishing character…
250+ posts into ccpopculture, I’m beginning to reconsider my initial decision to avoid star ratings entirely. 200 words isn’t a lot, and finding space to talk about what’s interesting about an artwork while also assessing its quality is difficult – my reviews regularly include an awkwardly shoehorned “Recommended” or similar. But star ratings are problematic.…
The fifth film in the Wrong Turn series changes setting again, moving from a mental hospital in the Bloody Beginnings to a small town in the middle of a music festival. Bloodlines introduces a genuine antagonist –named Maynard – with substantially more intelligence than the gibbering inbred psychopaths rampaging through the earlier films (though they’re…
Bloody Beginnings does its best to bloody up its beginning as quickly as possible; after a scenery-chewing psychiatrist speeds through the necessary exposition – we’re at a West Virginia psychiatric hospital filled with incest-mutated psychopaths who can’t feel pain and, of course, “There’s a button to open all their cells in case of fire,” duh…
This entry in the Wrong Turn series is the weakest so far. It follows a group of escaped prison inmates (plus supporting ‘victims’ – prison guards, police and a civilian). Like Wrong Turn 2, it features really clumsy introductory dialogue establishing these characters’ personalities; unlike Wrong Turn 2, you don’t get the sense that anyone…
This straight-to-video sequel establishes a tonal shift from the relatively serious Wrong Turn in its opening scene. A young starlet spouts hammy dialogue into her mobile, speeding along country roads in a red convertible, before a deformed hillbilly literally splits her in two with a hatchet. The scene is far broader – and more enjoyable…
