Back in the days when Twentieth Century Fox were still their own boss, some bright spark figured there must be gold in them thar hills of distributing direct to DVD sequels concerning crazed and perverted mutant mountain men. How else could you possibly explain why the amount of Wrong Turn movies suddenly, seemingly doubled practically overnight in the wake of the mostly-ok second installment to eventually balloon into a six movie franchise – plus remake.
So with that in mind, Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead whooped and hollered it’s way into the home video market much in the same way Wrong Turn 2: Dead End did. But while that entry brought some gory, slapstick stoner humour to the rather serious original, what could a third entry possibly do with an overfamiliar formula? Randomly include British tough guy actor Tamer Hassan from The Football Factory?
Oh wait… it totally did. Huh, that’s weird.
We open on a quartet of abysmally horny college students as they paddle their way down the rivers of West Virgina on a rafting trip and even though it’s seemingly been years since the last survivors of the mutant cannibal tribe have bothered anyone that actually been missed, these kids are about to be on the menu. After shooting an arrow through a woman’s boob, spearing a dude through the mouth and slicing another into three with a well placed hunting trap, both the maniacal Three-Finger and his kid protégée, Three-Toe (the mutant baby from the end of the last film) will no doubt have enough body parts to keep them fed for a while, but while they celebrate their haul, the fourth teen, Alex, manages to escape into the woods.
We shift to a nearby prison two days later to meet an assorted group of thugs and heavies who are all due to be transported by bus to another prison but the scariest con on board by far is the hulking crime boss Carlo Chavez. While he’s joined by as assortment of car thieves, white supremacists and at least one undercover U.S. Marshal disguised as a prisoner, he’s also being watched by a trio of guards including Nate Wilson who simply wants something better for himself than just overseeing criminals.
However, while the bus is on its way (with no actual wrong turn detected), it’s attacked by a battled pickup which forces it off the road and before you know it, both the prisoners and the guards are now at the mercy of Three-Finger and his bow and arrow. However, what started as a hunting trip for the giggling freak becomes intensly personal when his lumpy-faced ward, Three-Toe, is decapitated by Chavez as a warning to stay the fuck away. Of course, Wrong Turn mutants heed warnings like old people fuck and before you know it, the inbred lunatic is picking off victims wherever they’re not already engaging the act of trying to kill each other. But even with the help of a terrified Alex, can any of this mismatched group survive when Three-Finger has a sizable homefield advantage?
Before we set out, I guess I have to concede that Wrong Turn 3 is at least trying to do something different. After all, while the first film was a straight Texas Chainsaw/Hills Have Eyes ripoff (that was released before either got a remake, I might add), Joe Lynch’s sequel added a fair amount of Eli Roth style bro-humor and delivered none other than Henry fucking Rollins as a protagonist. Wisely (and I use that term very loosely) part 3’s director, Declan O’brien – who went on to give us two more sequels and Sharktopus like we’d committed a crime or something – decided to follow Lynch’s example and endeavoured to give us something more low brow and knockabout rather that try and bring actual scares back to the franchise. In fact, he pretty makes his intentions pretty obvious from the opening scene that crams in three outragous kills that seem less designed to chill us to our core and more to make drunken gorehounds cheer loudly in their living room like a football fan celebrating a win. Now, not that there’s anything wrong with that (I’ve cheered more than a few gruesome moments in my lifetime), but the rapid fire procession of bare breasts and outlandish gore feels like O’brien has a tits n’ grue quota to fill and he’s getting it out the way early as the hurriedly punctured breasts, split bodies and insipid dialogue (“Alex thinks I’m a slut, do you think I’m a slut?”, “Yes.”) suggests that the director wants to speedily get to the main storyline sooner rather than later.
To give the devil its due, the main story of Wrong Turn 3 isn’t that bad if you are willing to ignore a long list of plot holes and expected idiocy and it almost like someone is trying to make Con Air meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a fraction of the budget of one and a fraction of the talent of the other (guess which is which). However, at numerous times throughout the film, you get the distinct impression that O’Brien is far more interested in the arguing prisoner aspect of the script while the antics of Three-Finger feels weirdly pushed into the background in an attempt to make the stringy-haired cackler more of a freakish wild card rather than the main foe. Maybe it’s because O’Brien would have preferred to create an original slasher character without the Wrong Turn title applied, or maybe they just wanted to wring every bit of footage they could of Tamer Hassan doing his mental tough guy thing as he bellows, threatens and punches his way through the rest of the cast. He isn’t bad actually, but Wrong Turn 2 balanced the mixture of Henry Rollins and the presence of cannibalistic mutants far better, stopping one overwhelming the other, but Three-Finger – messy body count aside – isn’t enough of a standout villain to stand out in the wake of Hassan’s angry grandstanding.
Of course, if a snaggle-toothed flesh eater isn’t enough to stand out next the Hassan, his human cast has no fucking chance, but at least the script makes all the stock characters (virtuous guard, weaslily car thief, thuggish racist, female survivor) are distinct enough not to detract from all the vicious deaths that happen fairly regularly. However, the movie complicates matters further by adding a further plot point involving the survivors finding a pile of lost money that takes yet more focus from Three-Finger who must really be missing his other family members at this point now that he has to go fully solo.
While certainly watchable for those who have an affinity for the wave of direct to DVD horror sequels that usually played to the more adolescent end of the spectrum back in tbe 2000s, Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead pretty much does what it says on the tin for the most part. However it’s attempts to do something slightly different weirdly gets in the way of the exact stuff that people are coming to the film for in the first place. Still, it’s silly and gory enough to just about avoid you giving Three-Finger the middle finger.
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