Studio: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Janet Montgomery, Tom Frederic, Tamer Hassan & Gil Kolirin
Directed by: Declan O’Brien
Running Time: 92 minutes
Ratings: NR
Movie Review
Wrong Turn 3 starts off innocent enough. Two twenty-something couples are white water rafting down a river in idyllic West Virginia. The couples pull their rafts ashore. As the whorish girl takes off her swimsuit top and her boyfriend cups one of her lovely breasts (with all the sexiness of a breast cancer exam), an arrow is shot in her back, through her nipple, coming out the guys hand. Screaming, blood shooting everywhere, this sets the violent and silly tone of the kills in Wrong Turn 3.
There are two kinds of movies in Wrong Turn 3.
One is an absurd but standard straight to home video horror sequel with horrible acting, worse writing and needless killing. It’s understandable that a third movie in a series that didn’t have anything worthwhile to begin with is shallow, but it’s like they didn’t even try. The first Wrong Turn starring the lovely Eliza Dushku (call me) wasn’t exactly the best horror movie but at least it had a purpose and some sense of direction. Wrong Turn 3 has neither of these.
The second movie in Wrong Turn 3 is actually a not completely awful storyline involving a group of prisoners being transported via bus to another jail. En route, the bus is rammed off the road; the prisoners overtake the police and find themselves in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, with no sense of where to go. This is ultimately the storyline that drives the movie, obviously, only the mutant, psychopathic hillbillies from the prior Wrong Turn flicks show up with the subtlety of the Cloverfield monster. What made the first Wrong Turn suspenseful (if you can call it that) is that you never got to see who or what was doing the killing until the end. We see the killers from the first scene in the movie, removing any mystery or aura. It’s very reminiscent to Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 in its silliness, campiness, and overall stupidity.
The acting, as mentioned above, is awful. The most believable actor in the film is Tamer Hassan who plays a Hispanic drug lord inmate. He leads the prisoners and the guards through the woods as they stumble on bags and bags of money (now how did THAT get there?) and constantly argues with the white supremacist inmates, all the while fighting off the crazy ass hillbillies.
It’s only saving grace is…..wait. There is no saving grace.
Crave Factor – 1
Video
It’s Blu-ray, so the flick looks crisper but there’s still some grain to it.
Crave Factor – 5
Audio
English 5.1 DTS-HD – I don’t have a sweet surround system setup so I didn’t have the luxury of hearing this horse crap in full surround.
Crave Factor – 5
Features
“Action, Gore and Chaos!” featurette – Shot in 24 days in Bulgaria, director Declan O’Brien details the highlights and problems encountered with filming. He talks about amping up the action and gore in this third installment. Declan also details some of the bigger action sequences, kills, prosthetics and effects.
“Brothers in Blood” featurette – Declan returns to talk about the casting most of the principals in England. The cast, most of which play inmates, talk about the difficulty of being chained up with one another. The lone female lead talks about acting with a bunch of dudes.
“Three Finger’s Fight Night” featurette – This one features the big fight scene at the end of the flick between the Hispanic drug lord and one of the crazy ass hillbillies. Cool feature if you like technical fight and stunt talk.
Deleted Scenes
Usually with deleted scenes, there tends to be more character development added which is all good by me. This has none. We get two quick scenes that if added to original cut, would’ve brought the Crave Factor down to 0.
Crave Factor – 6
Conclusion & Final Thoughts
Overall, Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead (no one’s ever left for dead by the way, they just die) is as awful you’d think/hope it to be. The “prison break” storyline could’ve worked as a decent stand alone, straight to cable/home video but instead it’s shoved deep into the dirt for a carousel of trite storytelling and silly CGI blood. If there’s one thing I learned, is never underestimate the ingenuity of psycho, mutant, hillbilly killers, the various inventive kills is by far the highlight of the movie.
