Review by Tim-O
Directed by Declan O'Brien
Starring Tom Fredrich
It must be my age. I'm 36 years old and have been a horror fan since I was about 4. In 1980 I was 8 years old. Halloween was already legendary and Friday the 13th was tearing up the box office. For the next decade, the copycat slasher movies were being churned out left and right, as I'm sure you're well aware. When some of my "movie friends" were kids, they really got into the more Giallo influenced "who-done-it" slasher flicks like "Friday the 13th pt.1", "April Fool's Day" and "Happy Birthday to Me". Although I enjoyed those movies, the ones that really creeped me out were the "deformed-feral-killer-in-the-woods" like "Friday the 13th pt.2", "Just Before Dawn", "Humongous", and "Madman". Maybe it was because I spent alot of time playing in wooded areas as a kid, or maybe it was just the sheer fact that these whack-jobs usually didn't utter a word and killed anyone who got in there path for no reason. Either way, I always tended to gravitate toward that flavor of slasher flick.
When I saw the first "Wrong Turn" movie, it really got me going. The whole time I watched it I felt as if I had been whisked away in a time machine back to 1982. It was simple, fast paced, and fun. The 2nd one was OK but, admittedly, the main thing I can recall about it is that it was about some reality TV cast members getting killed and it had Henry Rollins in it. I HATE reality TV. So I think that part of "Wrong Turn 2" kind of turned me off. It wasn't really a horrible movie, but nothing really stuck with me. So, on to the latest installment of the franchise; "Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead".
"Wrong Turn 3" started out kind of weak to me. 2 couples are in the woods and get attacked by a WT mutant. Yawn! Then the story shifts to a prison where some inmates are being transferred by bus through that nasty mutant-riddled West Virginian wilderness. The bus crashes and the convicts take the guards hostage and try to escape through the forest on foot. In no time, the guards and convicts are being attacked. They run across a girl who survived the attack in the beginning of the movie and an old crashed armored car full of cash and the game is afoot. The rest of the flick is a cross between the original "Wrong Turn" and any number of escaped convict/hostage/stolen loot movies.
The "meat" of the movie really lies in the escaped convicts' story. The convicts are trying to survive each other while being stalked by a crazed mutant. The casting was good but the production values really show the low budget of the film at times. There's some bad CG gore and a really fake looking green screen effect used during an attack on a moving truck. The acting and direction are decent (for the most part) but there are moments of unevenness throughout. A couple of the convicts turn in good performances, though. Especially good is Tamer Hassan as a latino gang thug. I thought this guy was REALLY good. The one negative thing that stood out to me about the writing was a lack of any kind of back story concerning the killer(s). The cops who have lived in the area their whole lives seem to have no clue about any wild cannibal family living in the forest. Otherwise, the story/writing is fairly solid if not very original. There's not much you haven't seen or heard in countless other movies. Even so, "Wrong Turn 3" still kept my attention throughout and is an OK movie. I confess I may be more forgiving of it because of my love for the first one and I'm a sucker for this kind of slasher flick. It reminds me of my youth when those kinds of movies scared the (dog-squeeze) out of me.
If you've never seen Wrong Turn, I'd watch that one first, it's definitely a better movie. If you have seen "Wrong Turn" and didn't like it, you will probably hate this one. If you liked "Wrong Turn", I think you'll like "Wrong Turn 3"...just not quite as much. 6/10