Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

	Director: Declan O'Brien
	Starring: Tom Frederic, Janet Montgomery, Gil Kolirin, Christian Contreras
	Run Time: 92 mins
	Certificate: 18
	Rating:

Plot
A group of dangerous criminals are transported through a remote rural backwoods area in order to avoid a potential jail-break attempt by one of the inmates' gangs. But the bus is soon forced off the road by a truck and soon the criminals and guards start to be picked off one-by-one by inbred mutants who have been living in the mountains.

Review
After two entertaining instalments, it was only a matter of time before the Wrong Turn series derailed and this is the culprit - a limp, by-the-numbers sequel which does what I feared the first sequel would do and that is just plain out suck. What could be worse than a group of stereotypical teenagers smoking pot and getting naked? Well it's the group of stereotypical prisoners that are unleashed in this one! I mean seriously, how many films do we see where each group of convicts contains one complete psycho, one rapist, one weasel/little runt, one of the silent types and not to mention the guards, one of whom is usually a family man or dreams of a better life? Are American prisons that full of equal numbers of ethnic groups that each prisoner transfer contains Hispanics and white skinheads? And who thinks that having a horror film full of nasty, ruthless and depraved convicts is a good idea? We're supposed to root for the people who fall victim to the mutants

The script is all over the place and this is the film's downfall. There's actually a reasonable story in there waiting to come out with the cons killing the mutant's kid and sticking his head on a pole as warning for him to back off. But the film does nothing with this vengeance story and it's virtually dropped as soon as it happens. The mutant doesn't seem to get any more angry or any more determined to kill them (after all he was going to kill them all anyway) and apart from a stand-off with the head con later in the film, that's it. The script also spends a lot of time establishing a couple of characters but then throws it all out of the window in the final scene which opens the door to another sequel. I think that says it all when the entire characterisation of the film is blown away just for the benefit of a "plot twist" finale and sequel set up. Too much of the film is spent with the cons bickering about the money that they find in an armoured truck in the woods (upside down and in the middle of nowhere no less) and it almost turns into a mini-episode from the second season of Prison Break. The group of characters then spend the rest of the film wandering around aimlessly in the dark, occasionally falling foul of another hillbilly trap before arguing with each other again. The dialogue is terrible and whoever wrote it obviously thought that a lot of swearing and profanity from Tamar Hassan's psycho Chavez character would be a good idea. His performance is awful too and when he's not struggling to disguise his thick British accent, he's just shouting abuse at the top of his voice. The other actors don't fair much better and it's arguably the innate cackling and howling from "Three Fingers" that makes for the best performance.

I will say that the film isn't boring and at least manages to keep a steady pace. The CGI kills, as ridiculous as some of them may look, are actually quite inventive and there are a few decent practical effects including one of the cons stepping into a full-body barbed wire trap before being dragged off down the road. Unfortunately some of the novelty value is quickly eroded by the lousy CGI effects which follow the initial shock of seeing someone diced into three! The film needed more female characters (come on, this is a horror film after all and we need breasts - this film's sole quota being filled in the first five minutes but worth the watch!) to put into peril. The film needed less macho crap, less pointless arguing and more mutants. It's as simple as that. This mutant has some uncanny ability to teleport anywhere in the woods at any time so he sits up in trees, appears from behind doors and can outrun a speeding truck and appear in the road a couple of miles further along from where the characters last saw him. A few more mutants would have alleviated that problem. The budget for this one looks to have been dramatically cut resulting in less mutants, more stupid CGI gore and some of the worst green screen effects work since the dawn of movie making. Take a look at the background in the driving scenes and it's like something out of the 40s where some lousy rear projection is played whilst stagehands rock the prop vehicles from side to side.

Verdict
Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead isn't the sequel I was hoping for and is such a disappointment after the last sequel. With annoying characters, some grade school script problems and a general sense of reducing the sum of it's successful parts, the "franchise" has certainly taken a wrong turn somewhere - let's hope the next sequel finds the right route!