Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead Movie Review

Take the show "Prison Break", and add any of the hundreds of horror movies that deal with kids in the woods and you have "Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead". Aside from a few cool special effects (most of which are CGI), I would say to avoid this needless sequel of the first two films. Filmed in Bulgaria (substituting for West Virginia) with a mostly British cast (all of whom speak with an American accent), the performances are not the problem; as a matter of fact, the direction and the look of the film are nice also--I guess I was just disappointed because there is really nothing NEW to add to the first two films that hasn’t already been done in film after film except for trying to outdo the "The Final Destination" films in terms of who has the more horrific dispatches of victims. Now, I will say this: Within the first five minutes, we are given a trio of really disgusting screen deaths which will create buzz among the Fangoria crowd with the highlight being an actor who is horizontally sliced into "three’s" by razor-wire. However, as cool an idea as it was, it looks totally artificial onscreen and especially so when the scene is paused and viewed frame by frame.

Director Declan O’Brien has done a fine job turning the story about an inbred cannibal stalking its human dinner taking it from storyboard to film and the Bulgaria forests look beautiful on film, as do the scenes of the teens rafting on the mountain rapids. The music is suspenseful and it was nearly impossible for me to tell that the unknown cast were Brits in disguise. There is lots of carnage (and some light nudity) so I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone under the age of 15 if I had to recommend it at all. Listen, while the movie is certainly not a bad one, it is just a retread of any horror film you have seen in the past ten years. Different actors, to be sure, but the movie still feels a bit moldy. I DID like the storyline that involved prisoners shackled to each other as it made things a bit more claustrophobic. Be sure to continue watching after the movie seems to end as there is a coda to the film which makes it appear that a "Wrong Turn 4: This Crap Never Ends" will be in the works.

The film is presented on DVD in widescreen and the colors and sound are all to be admired. There are a measly two deleted scenes included in the bonus features but, for the interested, there are three mini featurettes which are all just basically "Making Of..." documentaries.