I consider myself as having a lot of ongoing “review series” that I do my best to add to whenever I can. For instance, I plan to review the rest of the Friday the 13th movies, I haven’t even started reviewing A Nightmare on Elm Street in spite of it being a definitive franchise in my life, and I am up to, like, thirty Full Moon Features that I have reviewed. A little while ago, I made a commitment to watch and review the Wrong Turn movies here on The ‘Bib. It was an undertaking I was looking forward to, partly because I hadn’t ever seen the films, whereas a lot of the time I am revisiting a film to recollect my thoughts on it.
The first review I wrote was for the original film back in early 2021, where I deemed the original film an above-average slasher film but a subpar film overall. It borrowed from other, more distinct films, and, ultimately, it didn’t have a whole lot of memorable scenes or moments to speak of. It was the kind of film I wouldn’t be surprised to see receive a sequel or two, but I am astonished to say has thus far received six of them.
After that, I didn’t write about Wrong Turn 2 until the Winter of that year, where I left the film with generally the same sentiment. Wrong Turn 2 was, as far as I can tell, the one everybody liked the most. I could see a definite tonal shift with the sequel. Whereas the first film played it as a straight slasher film, Wrong Turn 2 amounted to what I would call a “fun slasher” film, filled with campy acting and nudity. I was up for it, but it didn’t do enough to hold my attention or make me interested in the rest of the series. (I actually rated Wrong Turn 2 a 2.5 compared to the 2.6 I rated the original film, which means I must have felt strong enough to underscore that I enjoyed the original at least marginally more.) As said, considering this was considered by most people who’ve seen the Wrong Turn movies to be the best of the Wrong Turn movies, I can admit that the wind was taken from my sails a bit.
Having the year 2009 as the release date for a slasher film says a lot more about what to expect than you might think. Although we always think of the eighties as the era of “naughty” slashers, 2009 was an exhibitionists’ wet dream, with Rob Zombie at the helm of the Halloween franchise and Friday the 13th never being hornier. In the first five minutes, we are met by full-frontal nudity and that same woman’s eyeball being eaten. In other words, the film immediately makes it clear what it is all about – this is a lowest common denominator movie. It isn’t a film concerned with reinventing the wheel, but only wants to give you exactly what helped make the genre a staple for generations. I know calling something the “lowest common denominator” can be perceived as an insult, but I don’t mean it in a derogatory fashion. Similar to when Lloyd Kaufman refers to his films as schlock, I mean it as a term of endearment.
Sometimes stupid fun is all you are looking for.seems deceptively more complicated than the average film. I respect that. Basically, a transfer bus crashes in the forest, and now, a group of convicts and correction officers are scrambling around the forest on the run from everyone’s favorite cannibalistic hillbillies (not those ones), then, be mowed down. The added wrinkle of having the victims be inmates creates newfound potential and a new dynamic to play with.
The film was directed by Declan O’Brien, a filmmaker who has never appeared on the Nightmare Deck before now. Luckily (Luckily?) for him, he will have a second and third opportunity to leave a mark, as he was also the director of Wrong Turn 4 and 5.
I couldn’t tell you much about the characters in this film. This is because they aren’t fleshed out, fully body being, but are more or less props serving for the high concept. When the bus crashes, the inmates and officers all duck for cover from the hillbillies (the Wrong Turners’), but it isn’t long before their own needs for control start to bleed in. It is a concept that plays out about how you would expect, one particular criminal takes control of the situation and plays a mirthless sociopath.
The film doesn’t skimp out on brutality, showing bloodshed any chance it can get. The violence is, of course, over the top and as hammy as the dialogue. This is entirely par for the course for the kind of (fun) slasher film this is aiming to be. The characters aren’t developed enough to really mourn their deaths and the gore is too removed from reality to resonate beyond a superficial level. A fun slasher film has a very different mindset than a standard horror film. In theory, when you watch Alien, you hope to see Ripley survive and overcome the Xenomorphs. In a slasher film, you want some characters to survive. You want other characters to meet the business end of a machete. It is actually a beautiful, wonderful kind-of absurd, because a lot of the times the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. A man with frosted tips catcalls a woman on the street? Let’s see his spine ripped out Mortal Kombat style. Wrong Turn 3 provides us with a couple characters who really do deserve what’s coming to them.
Although I was initially open to the new wrinkle to the established formula (the idea of having many of the characters being violent criminals), in the same way I feel like I was open to the reality show formula of the second film, it is a novelty that doesn’t pay out in the way I’d hoped. In fact, it feels less like a device to create a film and more like a device to pad a film’s runtime. There is too much melodrama and plodding dialogue. This is a slasher film, but most of the runtime is spent on the dynamic between the prisoners and their inability to trust one another. As a story, it makes perfect sense for that to be what most of the runtime is spent on, but it just doesn’t make for a very compelling film. Most of the gruesomeness comes from them as well, and, once again, it just isn’t very interesting.
The “final” girl is as nondescript and underdeveloped as they come. Do you remember when I mentioned a topless woman who is brutally murdered at the start of the film? The one in the first five minutes of the movie? This is that woman’s friend who survived the hillbillies’ attack. She later becomes united with the inmates and officers, and that is the extent of what we know about her.
As I briefly touched on, the film uses the familiar trope of offering a change in perspective for our antagonists. The hillbillies remain a nihilistic bunch, but by putting rapists and murderers on the menu, it can be argued they aren’t wholly the antagonists of the film anymore. Instead, it is one gnarly character in particular who leads the inmates and acts like a major asshole. Thus, the perspective shifts and what they are trying to sell you on with the film is a little different. Now, part of the film and what it is building toward is that character receiving his comeuppance and our desire to see it done in grisly fashion. It is a concept that could work and we’ve seen work, but didn’t do much for me in this film.
Every now and again, our hillbilly friends will pop up and wreak havoc, and, for what it’s worth, they still have a presence about them. Every time I hear the cackling, goblin-esque sound of them closing in, I feel momentarily reengaged into the film. They aren’t allowed the chance to show much as far as personality is concerned and their makeup work is more goofy than menacing, akin to monsters from the Goosebumps TV series more than a presence you could believe exists in real life. The enjoyment they provide is too scarce and far in between to carry the film, with only one or two fun kills to write home about – in one sequence, a victim is caught in a net and taken away by a pick-up truck, their body scraping against the road’s pavement the whole way (which I thought was pretty cool).
Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead is a new low for a franchise that has never exactly soared, it offers scenes and moments that left my mind nearly as fast as they entered.
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