Early into Wrong Turn 5 — the opening credits, to be exact — a great visual joke is delivered: The first two words of the title plop onscreen over a shot of leaf-covered forest grounds, but the numeral portion is represented by an open hand freshly chopped from the arm of a female jogger. If only writer/director Declan O’Brien (who also helmed the previous year’s Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings) had displayed more of that wit.

Instead, he settles right in to a rote tale of five college kids you won’t care about, much less be able to tell apart — until they’re torn apart, in which case knowing who’s who is made all the easier. They’re camping out at a West Virginia town hosting the annual Mountain Man Festival, a music fest that rivals Coachella, according to the TV news reporter on assignment in the small town’s obvious backlot set. Of course, they’ll never get there.

Wrong Turn 5 assumes you’ve seen every entry of the franchise — all but the 2003 original made expressly for home video — so it need not introduce you to its trio of inbred, mutilated hillbillies who feast on their human victims: Saw-Tooth, One-Eye and Three-Finger, so named for their individual deformities. (Cleft Palate, it appears, was too much of a line-crosser.) Well, I have seen the entire series, and just a smidge of catch-up each time would be appreciated. This installment throws a Pinhead into the mix: Hellraiser icon Doug Bradley, as the killers’ normal-looking father figure.

One can’t complain too much about its economy; this is, after all, a franchise that exists solely to showcase gruesome deaths. In that department, this fifth go-round offers two gloriously gory demises. The best involves one tow truck, two legs and three sledgehammers; the other, a guy buried up to his neck in a soccer field, and a big ol’ piece of farm equipment bearing rotating blades. O’Brien scores by choosing practical effects over computer-generated ones. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.