"These hillbillies are going crazy."
— Tagline
Fourth film in the Wrong Turn series, and the first one to be a Prequel.
Bloody Beginnings explores the origins of the hillbillies and is set primarily in an abandoned sanatorium, which means all sorts of horror featuring various hospital-equipment to a group of people who take refuge from winter there.
This film has examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital: Main setting is an abandoned sanatorium surrounded by winter, which houses the cannibalistic Terrible Trio.
- Autocannibalism: It is revealed that One Eye and Three Finger acquired their trademark deformities this way.
- Bottle Episode: The majority of the movie is set in the sanatorium with a blizzard to keep everyone inside.
- Dead-Hand Shot: Used on this poster
◊, which depicts a severed hand laying on the snow.
- Downer Ending: Everyone dies, and the cannibals are free to continue their murder spree. Kenia and Sara are the last two survivors, and when it seems like they're home free, they are swiftly decapitated by a trap set by the mutant cannibal trio.
- Feel No Pain: Three Finger, One Eye and Saw Tooth are stated to have a severe case of congenital analgesia (meaning they feel little or no pain). This led to a period of presumably exploratory Self-Harm in their youths; Three Finger bit off and ate his missing two digits, One Eye gouged out and ate one of his eyes with a fork, and Saw Tooth began grinding his teeth against walls.
- Final Girl: Averted. Kenia and Sara last to the end, but are killed.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Vincent obviously enjoys seeing Sara and Bridget have sex, nor do they mind when he watches them.
- Hope Spot: Just as it seems Sara and Kenia are going to get away via snowmobile, they end up accidentally driving through a barbed wire fence, which decapitates the both of them.
- If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Kenia gets the others to spare the cannibals who they trapped in a cell by arguing this. They soon escape before killing her for her troubles, along with all the rest too later.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Like usual, the hillbillies are cannibals. Quite gruesomely, Daniel gets captured and cut up while alive, with them slicing choice parts off of his body to eat.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Kenia convincing the others to spare the cannibals not only causes others to be killed by them, but also herself.
- Lesbian Jock: Sara is a lesbian runner who practices during the film.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Sara and Bridget, the lesbian couple, act just like their straight friends. Both have long hair, wearing revealing tops and tight-fitting jeans like them too. This isn't exaggerated though, making the two more chapstick.
- Made of Iron: The hillbillies' seeming invulnerability in the series is justified by medical reports which state that they have a disorder that makes them Feel No Pain.
- Ms. Fanservice: Jenna, Sara and Bridger are all beautiful young women. The three are introduced having sex while topless (while in the case of Bridger of Sara, it's together since they're a couple). Bridget and Sara also have another sex scene later.
- Nose Shove: A character has a spike shoved up his nose.
- Off with His Head!:
- Claire is decapitated by the hillbillies' wire noose.
- Sara and Kenia are beheaded with razor wire the cannibals spread as a trap when they attempt to leave on a snowmobile.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: It's mentioned that the sanitarium staff, because they had nothing else to go by, named the hillbillies the Hillikers.
- R-Rated Opening: When the students are introduced, four of the nine (two couples) are all having sex in rooms opposite each other.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: "The Blue Danube" plays over the scene of the escaped patients wreaking havoc throughout the sanitarium.
- This Is a Drill: A big 'effing one is used to kill Jenna.
- Stewed Alive: A character is tied up by the cannibals, and slowly dies watching them hack off chunks of his flesh, which they dip (along with lots of veggies) in a big pot of boiling oil, for a "fucked up fondue".
- Token Minority Couple: Sara and Bridget are the people of color in the cast. Bridget's actress is mixed race, of Caucasian and Chinese parentage, while Sara's black. The two are a lesbian couple.
- Tongue Trauma: Kyle has his tongue cut out by the cannibals.
- Torture Porn: The "fucked up fondue" scene, along with a few other instances, like death via electroshock, and dismemberment on a makeshift barbed wire rack.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Kenia begs the others not to kill the inbred cannibals. Cannibals' lives are spared, but in return this decision is responsible for nearly every single death in the subsequent films.
- Vasquez Always Dies: Sara, a runner and the most athletic among the women, inverts this. Having escaped the cannibals with Kenia, it seems like she's going to make it until both die at the last possible moment.
