The first installment of the Wrong Turn franchise was a fun and surprising little tale of cannibals messing up young people in West Virginia after a few decades of inbreeding turned them into resilient monsters. The follow-up was a respectable attempt that took the series to it’s logical conclusion: Henry Rollins. As for the third entry, I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea what the fuck happened, but I assume it involved cannibals trying to eat young people. Which brings us full circle to Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings, a movie that kind of almost sort of tells you how it all began. In case you were wondering, these in-bred meat eaters weren’t always wild – no, they spent a few weeks in an asylum before managing to escape, start a riot, and kill a good portion of the staff. Then the state of West Virginia apparently decided to pretend that never happened and just ignore that gigantic building, allowing the inbreeders to use it as their base of operations before they, I guess, move out into the woods by Wrong Turn. That may sound like this movie was bad, but that’s just my snarky way of writing, in fact, the movie is quite -

We weren’t really sure if last week’s Commentary Commentary was gross enough for the lot of you. So a poll was taken – it pretty much consisted of Brian Salisbury and myself – and it was decided the ante needed to be upped this week. Especially in honor of Fantastic Fest, we felt it was time to really turn on the gore and mindlessly fun commentary tracks. So we’re heading back with the South Park boys to Cannibal! The Musical, Trey Parker‘s first feature film which was subsequently picked up by Lloyd Kaufman and the fine (?) people at Troma Entertainment. What we got shocked and amazed even our gore-filled hearts and minds. A grotesque but absolutely hilarious look at the real-life trial of Alferd Packer, a 19th Century prospector who was accused of cannibalism in Colorado. The film isn’t the most accurate depiction of the events, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t entertaining. Equally entertaining is this commentary track featuring cast, crew, and ample amounts of consumed alcohol, something most commentary tracks are lacking in. Here’s what we found out. Note: it isn’t much.

Writer-director Jorge Michel Grau faces a steep challenge with We Are What We Are. As the maker of an existential drama centered on a morose family of Mexican cannibals, Grau must find some way to connect his audience to the material, to unearth the humanity behind a gruesome, depressing subject. Let the Right One In and Let Me In, its American remake, established a template for this sort of enterprise, mixing the pangs of young love and the aching loneliness of the vampire’s everyday existence with the characteristic gore of a genre flick. Yet, cannibals are less sympathetic than vampires, the pop culture ghouls-of-the-moment, whose survival depends on human blood. There’s something far less romantic about humans who devour other humans just because they’ve developed a taste for them instead of, oh, McDonald’s. Filmmakers have traditionally understood this: Aside from one Hannibal Lecter, it’d be hard to finger a movie cannibal of note.

Robert Fure is tired of lazy cannibals who can’t even bring together enough firewood to roast that succulent leg of lady.

Grab a basket of freedom fries and make sure to check out one of the best horror films that France has to offer in today’s entry into our 31 Days of Horror.