Sortie Fatale 5: Les Liens du Sang

How that franchise has fallen from exciting and riveting to crass and predictable in the span of 4 sequels is saddening.

This 5th installment is basically a redux of the 3rd one, with a similar set-up and a just as forgettable cast of characters. It unevenly tries to maintain a balance between slasher, backwoods & gore but has none of the jump-out-of-your-seat thrills of the former and dispatches the second midway through the movie. So we are left with gore, and plenty of in a mean and disgusting way. The kills are traditionally inventive and bloody in the "Wrong Turn" franchise, but now they're just meant to induce nausea. The creatures slowly feed a bimbo her entrails, slowly smash a hunk's knees to smithereens, slowly burn a drunkard in a can, you got it, it's got to be slow and mean and disgusting. And the creatures laugh maniacally throughout it all, as if the director expected its audience to laugh with them at their victims' misery. I found it mean, gratuitous and insulting and came out of this seating feeling dirty and cheap.

On a positive note, there's some good sex scenes that are a throwback to more "innocent" slashers, and the sheriff had presence and gusto. It also looks slick and professional, which does not excuse its zero values.

Wrong Turn 5 (2012)

** (out of 4)

A group of college students are on their way to a music festival in West Virginia when they're targeted by Maynard (Doug Bradley) and the three mutant rednecks. Before anyone can be harmed Maynard is thrown in jail where the sheriff (Camilla Arfwedson) plans to turn him over to the U.S. Marshalls in the morning but sure enough the three mutants show up to try and break him out.

WRONG TURN 5 is basically just a remake of RIO BRAVO or ASSAULT ON PRECENT 13, whichever film writer-director Declan O'Brien is a fan of. Either way, this film is certainly a step back from the previous entry but fans of the series should find a few things here to keep them entertained, although there's no question that they scaled by on the gore and violence levels. These two films were filmed pretty close to one another and it's clear that O'Brien wanted to get them as far away of the first two in the series. I really don't blame or fault him for trying to mix things up but this film can't compete with the fourth in the series let alone something like the two films it's borrowing from.

With that said, again, I enjoy the fact that the writer-director tried to do something different with the series but we've seen this type of horror film way too many times and there just aren't enough original moments here to keep it entertaining. Everything in the plot is just something we've seen before and even the death scenes aren't all that memorable especially after what we've already seen. The one saving grace in the movie is the performance of Bradley who is just downright evil. He pretty much has to stay behind the jail cell for the entire film so it's just the lines of dialogue that he has to work with. Bradley does a wonderful job at just being the creepy old man and without him there's no question that the film would drag.

The sheriff character is a well-written one, a strong female role and the actress does a good job with it. The rest of the cast is pretty forgettable and even worse is that the screenplay makes them all some of the dumbest that you're ever going to see in a horror movie. Plus, there are countless logical issues here including the fact that there appears to be no one in this town other than the main characters. Yes, I know there's a music festival going on but surely not everyone is attending it. Even the fact that this small town is having a festival and yet the only motel there still has rooms available to rent to the college students is something of a joke. Yes, that's nit-picking but when a film leaves you bored like WRONG TURN 5 did me, it's easy to see the flaws.

In Fairlake, West Virginia, there is a festival during the Halloween called Mountain Man Festival. A group of college students hits the patriarch Maynard (Doug Bradley) of a hillbilly cannibal family on the road and they are arrested with Maynard by Sheriff Angela (Camilla Arfwedson). Soon his boys assault the Sheriff Station in a night of crime spree.

"Wrong Turn 5" is a stupid, annoying and unfunny collection of clichés. The characters are irritating and take the most imbecile attitude as possible. The town has a festival but it seems to be a ghost town. The story might have worked with humor, but the heavy hand of director Declan O'Brien makes a forgettable garbage. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "Pânico na Floresta 5" ("Panic in the Florest 5")

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines in the on-going mountain men franchise continues to slash it's way through stupid characters, lame decisions made by the characters, gruesome CGI like deaths and gory galore. It was an average and quite medicorish film which holds and shows corny and cheesy moments throughout the entire film.

Looking back a year from now, I thought Wrong Turn 4 was bad. It wasn't awful but it was average. This film falls back under the ban wagon, nearly going in the same direction that the third film from (2009) did.

I'm not a massive fan of the 3rd and 5th films but I'd rather watch this one over the 3rd, but on the prequel or the classic first two. BUt once again, Declan O' Brien has no idea of what Horror films or Slasher films are. He continues to use horrible CGI effects, wasteful moments which could be great, excessive nudity/gore and a story line which he promises which will be good, accept only holding many plot holes which need to be grand, to create a solid premise throughout. Oh well, after these 3, we can only expect the next sequel or so to be the same if we still have the same creator behind the task.

If you love slasher films and I mean love them, Wrong Turn 5 is definitely up your ally. If you dislike films in this age with it's predictable moments with no suspense, avoid it. I didn't hate it like the 3rd but didn't find it averagely decent like the 4th, but instead just found it Time Wasting Material. I found the characters stupid, the mutants (accept for Three-Finger) looked stupid, everything like i mentioned before (who was going to die, supposed jump scares) was all predictable. I was able to guess this film's every move. The use of CGI in the film is pretty annoying and lastly, it is quite tedious. Another aspect I found disappointing was the story and where the entire story took place. The start, in the dreaded woods was quite promising and then putting it in the town, just stupid! Another element with the hill-billies slaughtering people at a celebration in the year 1817 was also a really stupid element for the director to add in! It never made any sense nor do I think it had anything to do with the hillbillies lives!

The only real prop I can give this film was Doug Bradely. He actually didn't too badly, despite the cheesy, predictable material he was given.

Overall, it's not horrible but it's not great either. I believe that if they continue to have Declan O' Brien behind the camera, the Wrong Turn franchise will continue to be a predictable, no suspense on the gore mess.

5/10. I'd rather watch it than the 3rd one.

Some teenagers go to a festival in a small town where a kind of Halloween masquerade takes place. When an old man attacks them with a knife, the kids get arrested too, because they carry drugs on them. However, the old man is the leader of the freaks we know from the previous parts of the series. They come to rescue 'daddy', and among the Halloween masks, they don't even attract too much attention with their looks. The police station is soon under siege, a situation reminding me of the John Carpenter classic 'Assault on Precinct 13'.

Part 5 is probably the most vicious episode of them all, not hiding the violence in a dark forest, but openly showing it in the streets and enjoying it to a degree some viewers may find disturbing. There were 5 major censorship cuts in the DVD released in my country, and it is not hard to see why (some missing footage could be spotted in the bonus material, anyway). Not that I was angry about that - it was over a bit sooner. 'Wrong Turn 5' is rather crude and simple, splatter effects over story content, apparently the series is on its decline here. Camilla Arfwedson got a great female lead role as the sheriff at least. I voted 8/4/6/7/5/4 for the 6 movies.