Wrong Turn 3:
  Left for Dead

Slasher Trash with Panache?

Review:  JA Kerswell

Another example of why a trip to the great outdoors might not be a great idea—especially in West Virginia. In this second DTV sequel to the 2003 theatrical slasher hit WRONG TURN, prisoners being transported through the forest are ambushed by hillbilly mutants, who find themselves fighting not only for their freedom but also for their lives. This sequel isn’t perfect, but it is not nearly as bad as you might have been led to believe.
 
As with the previous two films, WRONG TURN 3 contrasts the beauty of nature with its darker side: primal violence. It begins with two couples water-rafting, although thankfully this is not a remake of SAVAGE WATER (1979)! This prologue has fun with some slasher tropes, featuring not only topless nudity (with a busty victim-to-be exclaiming, “The girls gotta breathe!”) and another character lighting a joint, saying, “I’m gonna blow a stick.” It’s like none of them has ever seen a backwoods slasher before. Like clockwork, before they even have time to indulge in premarital sex, inbred cannibal Three-Finger (Borislav Iliev) turns up to slice and dice them (and lick their still quivering body parts), all apart from Alex (Janet Montgomery), who manages to dodge death and escape into the woods for now.
 
Elsewhere, prison authorities move up the transfer of a dangerous group of inmates to another jail to prevent trouble. Unbeknownst to them, rival inmates Chavez (Tamer Hassan) and neo-Nazi Floyd (Gil Kolirin) have an uneasy truce and plan to break free during the transport. Nate (Tom Frederic), a warden tasked with overseeing the transfer despite it being his last day on the job, begrudgingly agrees to it, partly because he knows the route through the West Virginia forests, having grown up there. When the prison bus is ambushed by a truck en route, the cons think it is part of their plan until the vehicle is forced off the road and overturns; fleeing the wreckage, they have to take shelter from a barrage of arrows. Unaware that they are under attack by bloodthirsty cannibals, they run into a hysterical Alex, who says she is being pursued by them. Initially, they doubt her, but soon recognise the danger they face.
 
Also, realising they have a window of opportunity to escape before the authorities discover them, the cons force the guards and Alex to come with them as human shields against the snapping teeth and pointed weapons of West Virginia’s (least) finest … 

Bar Montgomery, WRONG TURN 3 is even more testosterone-fuelled than the first sequel, which is quite something considering that film starred Henry Rollins. Alex and the wardens being the filling in a mutant hillbilly and violent machismo sandwich, certainly make for a dramatic dynamic, and it is bolstered by some higher-than-average performances, especially from the sparring head convicts. However, surprisingly for a WRONG TURN film, Three-Finger is somewhat of a side character as the lone hillbilly mutant (after the convicts kill his son early on). He appears, kills someone in a gory manner, and then disappears into the woods for the next ten minutes with a high-pitched laugh—although he features heavily in the film’s climax. It is perhaps a misstep. The film features the expected inventive gore—ranging from eyes forced out on the end of arrows (and popped into a Three-Finger’s mouth like a grisly amuse-bouche) to people being bisected by backwoods booby traps—although some of the CGI effects show their age. The film does throw in a few head-scratchers, such as, would no one come looking for a security van carrying large sums of cash? Where exactly does Three-Finger get his gas from? And, if the forests of West Virginia span 12 million acres, why do people keep bumping into each other?

Utilising a predominantly British cast adopting American accents, WRONG TURN 3 was part of a series of genre films produced in Eastern Europe, filmed near Sofia, Bulgaria (although it hides this quite well). This cost-saving approach surprisingly resulted in higher production values than its predecessor, despite a $2 million budget, half the size of the earlier instalment. Louise Cliffe, who plays Sophie (the film’s topless first victim), was a British-American actress who later appeared on the UK version of Big Brother in 2011, finishing fourth. Janet Montgomery had just completed filming fellow slasher movie THE HILLS RUN RED (also 2009) when she made WRONG TURN 3, meaning they practically were filmed back-to-back. Produced by Constantin Film and Summit Entertainment, and released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, it was made to bypass cinemas like the first sequel. As with most DTV titles at the time, it garnered little attention from mainstream critics, but clearly earned enough profit to spark interest in continuing the franchise. Although Rue Morgue Magazine remarked, “ … while the law of diminishing returns is in full effect, it manages to make its 90-minute runtime vastly more entertaining than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick - wielded by an inbred cannibal, of course.”
 
Like most sequels, WRONG TURN 3 hits most of the same beats as the earlier films in the series, and although it is not as polished as the first and not quite as fun as the second, it remains slick and enjoyable enough to deserve another return to the less-visited woods of West Virginia.  

BODY COUNT 15: 
Female 2 / Male 14

1. Female shot through the head and chest with arrows
2. Male falls on a stake through his mouth
3. Male is bisected by a booby trap
4. Male is stabbed in the neck
5. Male is shot in the head
   
6. Male is decapitated (off screen)
   
7. Male has his face sliced off
8. Male is hung on barbed wire and dragged along a road
9. Male is impaled on a stake
10. Male burns to death
11. Female dies hung on barbed wire
12. Male is killed with a hook and has his head prised open with an axe
13. Male gets a spike through his head
14. Male is shot through chest with an arrow
15. Male killed with spiked club (off screen)

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