SUPER 8 (2011)

SUPER 8 is the story about some small town kids back in 1979 who are out one night filming a zombie movie. During the middle of shooting a scene near a train station, some maniac rams his truck head on into into a fast-moving military freight train. The truck explodes into a fireball and the train derails all over the joint. Somehow, all of the kids survive the disaster without any injuries. Afterwards, they're stumbling around the wreckage when they find the driver of the truck alive! He tells them to get out of here and to never talk about what they saw or else them and their parents will be killed. That scares the shit out of the kids, so they skedaddle and keep the fact they were there a secret.

Almost instantly, the military arrives and locks the town down and starts an intense investigation into the wreck and the now missing cargo. At the same time, all of the dogs in town run away and random people start disappearing. What's going on?! Something cool I hope and not something extremely simple and boring that we've already seen a million times before...well, you're out of luck. It's exactly what you think it is and nothing new or clever happens at all. In fact, it's kinda lame.

Technically the film was fine. Even with the rampant lens flare bullshit, the film looks good and the actors where all impressive. Going into the movie I was hoping for an engaging story built around strong characters, instead I got a watered down story build around predictable characters.

Worth watching, it is a good time waster, but I was really hoping for something...more. If you need me, I'll be in my room reading Robert McCammon's "Boy's Life" while watching Stranger Things.

WRONG TURN 4: BLOODY BEGINNINGS (2011)

Wow. After the steep decline between Part 2 and Part 3 I wasn't expecting much out of Part 4, but holy sweaty Jesus testicles this movie was kinda awesome! It's starts off in 1974 with some inbred, hillbilly maniacs breaking out of their cell at an insane asylum and causing a riot...including some brutal dismemberment and shock therapy torture.

Fast forward to 2003 and a group of young people are out for a fun afternoon of snowmobiling when they take a wrong turn and get lost. Fearing the very real possibility of freezing to death, the group takes shelter in the old abandoned asylum, but of course it's not completely abandoned. The three cannibal freaks don't take kindly to all of the exploring, partying and weed smoking going on in their home, so they crash the party and start killing and mutilating the fuck out of everybody.

WRONG TURN 4 is not only better than the original, but it's very much like the 80's slasher movies that I love so much. Compared to the majority of terrible slasher movies that have come out in the last decade (LAID TO REST I'm talking about you asshole!!!) WT4 is a breath of fresh air.  Not only was the script sprinkled with some light-hearted touches, but every single female in the movie was attractive!!! I have no idea who did the casting on this movie, but they're a fucking genius! I was especially smitten with Jennifer Pudavick who had a strong screen presence, is absolutely beautiful and did some impressive screams. She really should be the Final Girl in more horror movies.

Even though I liked the movie, it's still not a perfect. The music was fucking painful, the few quick nude scenes were so brief that they might as not even existed, the three cannibals should have had stronger characters, some of the scenes were too darkly lit and while I did like the special effects I just wish there had been even more gore and blood. Still, for a low budget sequel, WRONG TURN 4 was way better than I expected it to be.

Part 1 - Wrong Turn (2003)
Part 2 - Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
Part 3 - Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)
Part 5 - Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012)
Part 6 - Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort
Reboot - Wrong Turn (2021)

WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD (2009)

At 80% prison escape drama, 30% mutant hillbilly slasher killing, 5% cannibalism, 1% tits and 30% entertaining...WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD is the crappiest of the series (so far). It's not horrible, just very predictable and I found myself daydreaming a lot. Even during the attack scenes.

A group of maximum security prisoners are being transported on a bus to another location. Suddenly, a hillbilly truck appears and runs them off the road. Unable to contact anybody for help, the group is forced to walk through the scary woods. Which is exactly what the mutant cannibal monsters had in mind, because they have the forest booby trapped with all kinds of shit for chopping up people. Along the way, the group comes across a wrecked armored truck full of money. This leads to all kinds of drama. To break up the sausage fest the group also comes across a woman who's been in the woods for the last few days hiding for the cannibal guy.

Of all of the 666 different scenarios that the writers could have came up with for a WRONG TURN sequel I think number 667 would have been "have a group of dudes with fake tattoos walking around the woods talking nonstop about how tough they are while being hunted by a lone hillbilly cannibal who looks like a large, furless, physically disabled meerkat". Instead I would have gone along the lines of some more like "a large, furless, physically disabled meerkat family attacks a cheerleader camp. Humongous amounts of ultraviolence, ultranudity and ultrashort shorts and ultraskimpy t-shirts ensue".

Overall, WRONG TURN 3 is kinda entertaining.  Forgettable acting, two very brief topless scenes, CGI blood and gore, nearly the entire movie is at night, reasonably quick pace, way too much tough guy posturing.

Worth a watch, if you are extremely bored, but not really.

Part 1 - Wrong Turn (2003)
Part 2 - Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
Part 4 - Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)
Part 5 - Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012)
Part 6 - Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014)
Reboot - Wrong Turn (2021)