While the Wrong Turn franchise primarily went direct-to-video, five of the six movies worked together in tandem to create a rather seamless timeline, despite the franchise having many different writers and directors involved in its creation over the years.
The first movie, Wrong Turn, released in 2003 and the two films that followed, Wrong Turn 2: Dead End and Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead followed its story chronologically. Then, Declan O'Brien, who took the helm with the third film, retroactively went back to dig deep into the story of the cannibal family that has become the centerpiece of the horror movie franchise. It's somewhat common for horror movies to revolve around the villain instead of survivors; even though there are emerging final girls like Laurie Strode in Halloween and Sidney Prescott in Scream, traditionally the focus shifts toward the villains.
Another major facet of the Wrong Turn movies is the revolving door of victims who are essentially set up like cannon fodder for the inbred cannibals; they are easily dispatched and sometimes there are no survivors. While there have been numerous dead cannibals throughout the franchise as well, it has endured as a bloody endeavor known for copious amounts of blood and gore, and more extreme nudity and sexual content in later installments. While there are six movies total in the Wrong Turn franchise, the sixth movie, which released in 2014 was intended as a standalone film under a different director, Valeri Milev.
Wrong Turn: The Origins Of The Cannibal Family
In Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings, the origin story of the three brothers who serve as the main antagonists of the first movie - and the majority of the franchise - are the focus in this prequel. Beginning in 1974, the prequel opens with a bloody sequence in the Glensville Sanatorium where Three Finger, One Eye, and Saw Tooth are patients. The brothers stage an uprising where they take over the Sanatorium, free the patients, and butcher various hospital and nursing staff who had been seeing to their care. It is here where their condition is explored a little further - they are less sensitive to pain, are stronger, and have other mutations, though their intelligence doesn't seem to be incredibly impacted, as one might think. The cannibal lineage of the brothers has been kept going through familial inbreeding, however some of their abilities are due to chemical exposure from a paper plant near where they grew up.
The Odets Family Tree Is Explored In Wrong Turn 5
Led by Hellraiser star, Doug Bradley, Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines is a direct sequel to Bloody Beginnings, which picks up soon after the events of the fourth movie, which propelled the story into the 2000s. Maynard Odets (Bradley) helps the three cannibals and leads them on a killing spree. Bloodlines explores that Maynard, a serial killer, is actually the father of Three Finger, One Eye, and Saw Tooth. He and his wife, Delilah, lived in West Virginia and he worked at a paper plant. The run-off and pollution from the paper plant affected his wife's pregnancies, causing their sons to be deformed. From there, they isolated themselves in the wilderness and took to cannibalism to survive. While Maynard is shown to have a temper and is occasionally cruel to the mutants, it's clear he loves his family and clings to them after his wife's death from unknown causes. Bloodlines sets up the family as having a home in the woods in their remote cabin out in the backcountry of West Virginia, where the original film is set.
Wrong Turn (2003) Features The Main Three Cannibals
The only three antagonists who are shown in the first movie, Wrong Turn, are the brothers: Three Finger, One Eye, and Saw Tooth. Wrong Turn is set up very traditionally with a group of young people ending up lost in the woods after an encounter with an old man who appears to run a gas station. The map that's posted outside of the gas station shows a certain road as the most opportune route to take, and implies that he is frequently the one who leads travelers into the fray to provide food for him and his family. Though their connection isn't established in the first movie, when watching chronologically, it becomes more apparent. At the end of the first Wrong Turn movie, all three brothers appear to be killed in a fire, but a post-credits scene reveals one as an unexpected survivor.
Three Finger Survives The Fire & Continues In Wrong Turn 2
Wrong Turn 2: Dead End sees the destruction of almost the entire cannibal clan by its conclusion. A group of reality TV show contestants end up in the same woods as the first movie, serving as a direct sequel to the original. Three Finger is the primary antagonist here, but other members of his family (Ma, Pa, Brother, and Sister) are also introduced in this installment; one of the mutants is pregnant, and ends up giving birth to a baby, Three Toes, before getting killed by the contestants in the end of the movie. Wrong Turn 2 also connects the dots about Maynard's role as their father by explaining about the paper mill and the mutants' origin before he is blown up by dynamite and killed. By the film's conclusion, Three Finger and Three Toes are the last of their clan to have survived, which leads into the third movie.
Wrong Turn 3: Three Finger And Three Toes Are The Last Cannibals Standing
Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead is set after the events of the second movie and shows Three Finger and Three Toes trying to rebuild. While Three Toes is still a mutated cannibal, he possesses a childlike innocence and is seen setting traps for their victims; he does not seem to have the same menace as his relatives yet, though it's clear he's being taught the family trade. A group of convicts end up coming across Three Toes and, while he and Three Finger did intend to kill them like all the others, he managed to get overwhelmed and murdered. From there, Three Finger was incensed with rage and a need for vengeance after seeing Three Toes' head mounted on a spike. The seventh movie, from original writer Alan B. McElroy and director Mike P. Nelson is called Wrong Turn: The Foundation and will take a reboot approach that could revive the Wrong Turn franchise in a big way.