Search - Wrong Turn 3 [Blu-ray] on Blu-ray

Three Finger and his son Baby Splooge help the Wrong Turn fr

David J. Brown | 10/21/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"The first Wrong Turn came out in the time when horror was just getting revitalized with the Saw films and a slew of successful remakes like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead. It also was part of the time's trend in that it was a non-self-referencial horror film that also was paying homage to the type of horror that was vogue in the mid to late 70's. The Texas Chainsaw remake and Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses were also part of this wave. The first Wrong Turn was surprisingly entertaining for me. It was stylishly made and directed by Rob Shmidt(Crime + Punishment in Suburbia), fun, and well acted. Sure, it was nothing original and towards the third act when the villains reluctance to die, no matter how hardcore the damage they took, pushed credulity, but I still enjoyed it and it brought me back to memories of the original Texas Chainsaw, The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left, and Eaten Alive. It was good entertainment. Then years later the direct to video sequel, Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, was released and received much positive attention by fans and professional horror critics. It was energetically directed by first timer Joe Lynch(who was a clerk at 112 Video, a store I rented my horror from in my youth here in New York). It switched tones to more balls-out, in your face splatstick. It had a novel premise involving the hillbilly mutants attacking a group of contestants on a new reality show(very timely), and it had Henry Rollins pulling a Rambo and just being plain bad-a##! It was funny, fun, gross, well acted, and totally over the top to the point of hysteria. It's surprise success led to Fox now owning a profitable direct to video franchise and the inevitable Wrong Turn 3 was put into works. Well, here it is, and I assure you it won't go over as well as the previous films. It's quite mediocre and boring and the total quick death of this fun franchise.

None of the creative team, writers or directors, return for Wrong Turn 3, but that shouldn't be a negative sign due to the fact that that was the case with the fist sequel. Fox lets newcomers take a stab at their franchise and hope for the best. Well, this time they lost the hand. Director Declan O'brien isn't a first timer either when it comes to genre material. He's a veteran of Sci-Fi(I mean, Sy-Fy, D'oh) original productions like Cyclops and Rock Monster. I don't hold this against him. I was hoping this Wrong Turn sequel would be his road to legitimacy. His experience with the Sy-Fy Network means that he's a solid, fast working, journeyman director who can add flare to the lowest budgets, short scheduled shoot. Well, here the only thing the director contributes is efficiency. Unlike the previous Wrong Turn installments this film is without style. It's all by the numbers. There's no real or believable set ups. No suspense. It's just A to B to the next bloody death, and this film has the highest body count of all the Wrong Turn films. And the acting is mostly horrible. The lead prisoner bad guy, Chavez, is effective and the actor playing the hostage prison guard is good, but the rest of the cast, big or small parts, is terrible. It doesn't help that the script gives them dialogue only master thespians like Laurence Olivier could make convincing. I would say it's bad because nobody is committed to the characters, but it's worse then that, they are committed and their lack of acting chops makes it even more intolerable.

Plus, after Wrong Turn 2's ingenious, creative, and timely set up this film's plot is a real boring downer. It's been done so many times before, and done better. It's your basic plot about escaped convicts trying to make it out of the woods and holding some good guys hostage while they're all attacked by some inbred mutant hillbillys. Yawn. Been there done that. Sure, that's not a real problem if the director and the screenwriter are able to transcend the material and make the audience feel like we've never seen it before, but this film ain't that film. Plus, to make matters worse we spend more time with the convicts fighting each other over some conveniently found cash them we do with the survival of the fittest premise of man versus hillbilly. Hell, this script is so ham-fisted, it made Crocodile II(which had the same plot), seem downright Shakespearian. Also, unlike the previous films this one only focus on two mutants, the always returning from the dead Three Finger and his son Baby Splooge(the same baby born in Wrong Turn 2 and dubbed Baby Splooge by the filmmakers and not by the script). So, we get to see more of the always allusive Three Finger then ever before, and I assure you that's not a good thing. He's no longer creepy and more of a home made haunted house attraction. His maniacal creepy laugh so effective in the first film now just seems mannered and tacked on to compensate for the fact that this villain has no real character or personality. His son is in the film for minutes. We get a nice moment between pops and son and before you know it the little tykes head is on a spike. So much for a new character.

The make up in this film is also quite horrible. The first film, with the largest budget, had the benfit of having the late great Stan Winston as a producer and his special effects team to design the mutant make ups. The sequel had the great Bill Terazakis so they looked good too. This film is all rubber and no substance. I'm not sure if its the bad lighting or cinematography or if the make up is really that amateurish. The gore effects have no weight but they are right there and in your face. They're not even shocking or gross, because they look so phony. I know that can be a fun aspect of low budget horror, but in this film is just didn't work out that way. The opening scene follows Wrong Turn 2 in setting up some non-important characters and then killing them off in brutal ways. The fist film did it off screen, the second gave us a really macbre sight gag, and this film just gives us more victims. This time is just isn't interesting and just comes off as typical exploitation horror historionics. No excitement or repulsion, just waiting for the next scene to come.

The Blu Ray has some special features as well, not as many as the previous films. We get the obligatory deleted scenes. I didn't get through all of them, and I recommend you not even bother. We get three behind the scenes featurettes going over the special effects, the director and some of the fight scenes. Director Declan O'brien states that he wanted his film to be more action oriented then the previous installments. Which leads me to wonder why it's the least exciting and most boring of the three. Most of these featurettes go over the usual EPK stuff regarding how wonderful the director and is and how wonderful it is to work with everyone, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! Not worth watching even if you enjoyed this film somehow.

Bottome line, if you're a fan of the first two Wrong Turn films you are going to watch this film, hopefully just as a rental. Your love and devotion to the horror franchise will make you do it regardless of my warning. But, if your just a plain horror fan and a moderate admirer of the first two films just skip this all together. You'll thank me."

Not terrible, but nothing special

N. Durham | Philadelphia, PA | 10/20/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The Wrong Turn franchise is for all intents and purposes a one trick pony show. The first film was decent enough, but its first direct-to-DVD sequel was surprisingly good for its type. Now, here we are with Wrong Turn 3, which finds Three Finger and his crew of deformed hillbilly cannibals back in action and looking for blood. The story picks up with a prisoner transport bus crashing in the woods, and the crew of surviving guards and prisoners are soon picked off one by one, with some spectacularly bloody results. And yes, while Wrong Turn 3 has no shortage of blood, gore, and dismemberment; there just isn't anything shocking enough or compelling enough to hold your interest for long. It's pretty predictable to a point, but there is enough of the horror goods here that makes it worth checking out regardless."