This is an epic, cosmic, trans-dimensional tale that could only truly work in comics - blending surreal ideas with equally psychedelic imagery - about the demi-god Thanos' self-imposed quest to obtain the six "infinity gems" that will allow him to stand as an equal to his beloved Lady Death.
One of the gems is held by an entity known as The In-Betweener, while the rest are in the possession of Elders of the Universe and Thanos uses a combination of force and trickery to achieve his goal.
Jim Starlin is, of course, Marvel's master of all things cosmic and Ron Lim's beautiful art works wonderfully in parallel with Starlin's almighty concepts.
Stand-out moments include the full-page panels illustrating each of the gems' supernatural powers, but the real sucker-punch comes with the inevitable twist at the end of this magnificent tale.
A couple of weeks before I sat down to watch this Paul had told me of a review by legendary critic Kim Newman which simply described this movie as "weapon's grade shit". And you know what? Kim was pretty much on the money.
The previous Wrong Turn movies (especially the first with Eliza Dushku) managed to stand out from the crowd by having the mandatory college student victims be pursued by their cannibalistic hunters through the vast American wilderness.
Bloody Beginnings stupidly takes a wrong turn of its own by relocating the action to an abandoned sanatorium (because that's never been used as a setting for a horror movie before) and shoehorning in some pointless, vague origin story for the three inbred killers who've featured in the previous films. And it also stretches credulity to ridiculous lengths to suggest that in the 30 years since the hospital closed (due to a mass patient escape) no-one had spotted the hillbillies' return. No attempt is even made to suggest why they even bothered to return - when, in the other films, it's clear they are far more comfortable in the wilderness.
Anyway, a group of stereotypical college students get lost on the way to a friend's cabin and end up stumbling upon the abandoned hospital during a snowstorm... and the inevitable hilarity ensues.
Wrong Turn 4 pretty much churns out every cliché you'd expect from this type of slasher flick (kids do the sex and the drugs, kids deserve to die) and despite some almost inspired moments (such when the students turn the tables on the killers and capture them) never really surprises or delivers anything new.
It certainly adds nothing to the Wrong Turn mythology, which really didn't need a this half-baked attempt at giving the killers' some vague backstory.
On the positive side, the cast includes a fine selection of very attractive young ladies, several of whom are - early on - more than willing to take their tops off. So it has that going for it!
A military experiment to time travel into the future to harvest advanced technology (because the technology to travel through time clearly isn't enough) goes wrong and its original inventor, Radnor (David Hewlett) has to travel through the Stargate-like portal and run the gauntlet of the "Morlocks" (super-evolved cannibalistic humans who are the CGI spitting image of Primeval's "future predators") to recover the MacGuffin needed to put the plug back in the open portal.
Some shoddy effects and heavily signposted twists render this instantly forgettable - except for the bizarre, and really blatant, Primeval angle.
Dude, I like, fuckin' just hate Thanos. I don't know what the big deal is? He was in MvC2, big whoop. Appeal is unknown to me as to why people like Thanos.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Tom, video games don't count. Thanos is cosmically badass.
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