Wrong Turn 3 - Left for Dead

"Wrong Turn" was a great movie, the first one that is, then it started to go somewhat downhill in part 2, and now having seen part 3, I must say I am at a loss here. Why is the series on a downward slope and not able to pull up?

The story in "Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead" is not really bad as such, but it is the lack of excitement and thrills that makes it less than mediocre. And also that there is basically only one of these misshapen mountain folk running around. Sure, you see a boy as well and another towards the end, but throughout the entire movie it is just a single one doing all the killing. And he looks comical and goofy, so it is very hard to take him serious as a murdering mad man.

There is an okay amount of mutilation, blood and gore in this third movie, and that is one of the better things about it. And another thing that made it bearable to sit through was that the people they had cast for the various roles were actually doing good jobs with their given characters. (Just hard to take the mountain man serious as he looked like a spoof character!)

There isn't really any great plot twists or surprises to the movie, and it plows forward at a fairly good pace. The only surprise twist there was in the movie, was the end scene. I enjoyed it, and think it was actually a nice touch to the movie. But all throughout the movie I sat and hoped for the movie to pick up and shift into a higher gear.

And there were some pretty funny errors and goofs in the movie. For starters, Chavez must have incredible arm strength to be able to hold a shotgun out in stretched arm and fire it without any recoil. That was hilarious, even worse than Rambo and his guns. The other thing I noticed was when they cut off the legs to remove the dead person from the chain, it must have been some amazingly sharp blade on that knife as it cut through meat and muscle like butter, and it cut through bone apparently without even slowing down - or perhaps that convict didn't have any shin bones? It was just awful.

I am sure that newcomers to the "Wrong Turn" series, will find it enjoyable, but if you are a seasoned and weathered gore hound, then you will find "Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead" to be nothing particularly interesting and to be a fairly mediocre movie at best. I have seen "Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead" twice now since it came out in 2009, and can't say that it has gotten any better since.

Despite this, then I will still give parts 4 and 5 a go as well, just to have seen it all.

After the first two movies which were 5 or 6/10 this one was a real let down. The acting is poor and the story is poor. It would have helped to have more deformed bad guys rather than just one throughout the whole film. As there are families of baddies in the woods I though the film would have progressed from the second film and developed more of a story into the third film but this doesn't happen. The gore is what you expect with a couple of tasty deaths but the acting really is bad and let's the film down badly.You can see why this was a straight to DVD movie..hopefully they don't try and make a 4th one unless a good budget is used. You can see when the actors are in the bus that the road ahead is cheaply added into the film to save money...Don't bother with this film 3/10.

Movie #2 in the series was superior. This? The mutant hillbilly's makeup might have been effective, only with the poor lighting and cinematography, one couldn't tell. There was a lack of practical FX, instead they went the CGI route which would've been effective if someone with any skill had handled it. Seriously, why does anyone watch this kinda stuff= clever, well done kills and maybe some action scenes that give some amount of terror or tension. For whatever reason this movie missed it's mark. But it was probably intended as a direct to video film and not worth putting any properly trained personnel onto the project. 3-fingers certainly kept coming, beyond all realism, and the actor was probably the best thing in this disaster. The knees-down appearance of another person at the end with a dripping propeller blade shaft makes it appear that there's an unseen mutant hillbilly ready for a forth film. Let's not encourage that.

I am a big fan of the wrong turn series, especially the first one, i have only seen the second one once. But this film, oh what a shame, it does let the series down. The main problem with it is the acting and the dialogue. The story itself or the idea for the story isn't bad at all, but why choose such cheesy actors delivering such cheesy lines. The main lead copper isn't too bad, the female lead is okay, but the rest of them, oh where to start. There isn't enough hillbillies in it either, 2 or 3 of them at a count when there is meant to be a family of them according to the original wrong turn series. They seem to try and take this story back to the original woods too but somehow it just doesn't work, it doesn't have the same feel, maybe because this was set a night and the original was in the day. The special effects, gore and CGI leaves much to be desired too, its so cheesy its not stomach churning, more comical. But its not the worse I have seen/watched this year and I kind of did like the ending too. The worse of the year for me still goes to Cabin Fever 2.

As a fan of the first two 'Wrong Turn' films, I was expecting this to be a good but not great film with enough gore/horror/comedy to keep me entertained for 90 minutes. How wrong I was. The plot consists of this; four college kids are out rafting in the Bluefish River area, however their fun is abruptly ended when they are attacked by the mutant cannibal hillbilly Three Finger (Borislav Iliev). Only the teenager Alex (Janet Montgomery) succeeds in escaping running through the woods. Meanwhile, a group of dangerous criminals are transported from the West Virginia Grafton Penitentiary in a custody bus escorted by three security guards through the backwoods. Predictably the bus is attacked by Three Finger, causing the bus to crash in the woods and the struggle for power and survival begins.

Initially, I thought the plot was fairly well thought out and had the potential to work quite well. However, it doesn't work and these are the reasons why; the terrible casting, the laughable special effects and the dire script. I understand that this was a low budget horror movie but it could have been done so much better. The casting of British actors in American parts didn't help the film either with most of the casts accents slipping constantly, Tamer Hassan is particularly bad in his role and often reveals his strong London accent.

The special effects are beyond cheap and they look like something from the 70s or 80s. But undoubtedly the worst element of this movie is the script which could have been written by a couple of teenagers, the guards and cops have clichéd dialogue and the other actors have such a poor script to work with you almost begin to feel sorry for them.

Overall this movie is very poor and most importantly not scary in the slightest. In the end I found it a little insulting to the 'Wrong Turn' franchise.

I give it 2/10 and I think that may be slightly generous.