Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings

A group of terribly horny* young people get lost in a snowstorm and wind up taking shelter in an abandoned asylum, only to find out that the asylum wasn't as abandoned as it appeared to be. It was, in fact, home to a trio of inbred cannibals. The kind of inbred cannibals who don't appreciate unwanted house guests. Wrong Turn 4 seems to revel in the brutality of its kills a bit more than previous entries in the series. The bad CGI in the movie is a bit more noticeable this time around as well. The movie opens with an origin story for the cannibals, which also sets up the rest of the plot, but I'm honestly not that invested in the cannibals as actual characters. So the fact that this was a prequel to the other films in the series seemed a bit unnecessary to me.

Rating: 59% 

(Image from Wikipedia)

*"terribly horny" in that they are simultaneously terrible people who are particularly horny

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins

The town of Rejection, Nevada comes dangerously close to becoming a ghost town after 17 miners mysteriously die in a nearby silver mine. With no one left to work, the mine's owner, Hiram Gummer, comes to Rejection to investigate. What he and the last remaining residents of Rejection soon discover is that strange creatures have infested the area. Tremors 4: The Legend Begins takes the graboid action back to 1889, roughly 100 years before the events of the original Tremors film. Like most of the other sequels in the franchise, Tremors 4 adds a new graboid variation into the mix. In this instance, we see the graboids in an almost larval state. The characters call them Dirt Dragons. This new incarnation eventually evolves into the larger form of graboid we're more familiar with. Also, in case you hadn't already guessed, Michael Gross plays Hiram Gummer, the great grandfather of Burt Gummer, the character he plays in all of the other Tremors films.

Rating: 59%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Psycho IV: The Beginning

"Talk of the Town" gets the guest of a lifetime when Norman Bates decides to call in and offer his personal perspective on the topic of matricide. He shares a few stories about his mother and their really messed up psycho-sexual dynamic. He also tells them about some of his early, formative murders. It seems that some of those old feelings have come back to Norman. He's thinking about killing again... and that's about it. While Psycho IV definitely gets a few things right (it's somehow the only one of the sequels that uses any of Bernard Herrmann's amazing music) it's barely a movie. There isn't a whole lot of plot, it's mostly just vignettes of a young Norman and his icky times with Mother. The framing device of Norman and the radio show really slows down the pacing and the ultimate conclusion is pretty lackluster.

Rating: 55%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Enterprise S1E1 - "Broken Bow"

Everybody hates Enterprise, and to be honest when I was 21 as soon as I heard the Scott Stapp style crooner whining his way through a barely plucked acoustic guitar as the theme song I clicked it off. This first episode is actually really great, it turns out, from effects to story to acting. The plot is there's a Klingon who accidentally crashes on Earth, so it's up to Captain Johnathan Archer and his brand new ship, the, uh, Enterprise (like, future people have a really small stable of names to pick from I guess) to carry this Klingon back to his home world, Klingo, but will everything go according to plan??? Also, gripezone, but Star Trek is always patting itself on the back for diversity yet in six TV shows every crewmember has been hetero cisgender Americans/Europeans with a couple aliens thrown in for good measure.

RATING: 76%