By Geno McGahee
“Hillbilly? That can’t be.” – Sheriff Carver (Bill Moody)
I can understand why they keep making the WRONG TURN movies, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they just take screenplays that are lying around and modify them to fit the series. I find this so odd. There are so many writers out there with a love of hillbilly mutants that we could get a much better film than WRONG TURN 2 and WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD. Immediately, this third entry ignores the last film, bringing back Three Finger (Borislav Iliev) alive and well and just as happy as he was in the first two entries. In the second film, he had a shotgun blast blow right through his chest and launched him into the lake. He was dead and if he wasn’t, his lungs would have been really damaged. So you know that he would not be able to laugh like he did. I guess we must disregard the second entry and treat this like an entirely new story. Perhaps it happened before Three Finger was killed.
The film begins with some college kids going rafting and having a great time. Alex (Janet Montgomery), her boyfriend, Brent (Charley Speed), Sophie (Louise Cliffe) and her boyfriend, Trey (Jack Gordon), all take a break on the shore and it doesn’t take long for Sophie to take off her top. I always worry about a horror film that has nudity in the first five minutes. It’s usually a sign that they don’t have a lot going for it and are going to rely on T&A to maintain the attention of the viewer. Whatever the case, Sophie is showing off her chest and Alex comments that her behavior is sort of slutty. When Trey returns, Alex takes off to give the couple some private time and the loving begins. As he grabs her chest, an arrow shoots right through her boob and travels through his hand. He runs away and leaves Sophie to feel the wrath. Brent doesn’t do much better and we realize at this point that Three Finger and his son, Three Toes (Borislav Petrov) are up to their old tricks.
We get some really terrible CGI to represent that this is the third entry as Trey is sliced into three pieces and we transition to a prison transfer story. I believe this film was just a prison transfer story that was modified to fit the series, but maybe I’m wrong. I’m probably right. Chavez (Tamer Hassan) is an evil Mexican crime lord is being transferred along with white supremacist, Floyd (Gil Kolirin), an annoying car thief, Crawford (Jake Curran), and a guy that was wrongfully convicted of murder, Brandon (Tom McKay). Willy (Christian Contreras) is aboard, disguised as an inmate, hoping to get information on Chavez and become an ally. The only person aware of this is Nate (Tom Frederic), a prison guard. The other prison guard, Walter (Chucky Venn), is kept in the dark and that’s probably because of his negative attitude. When they get Chavez from his cell, he was a little aggressive.
The bus travels along and all is normal, but a truck starts closing in, honking its horn and flashing its lights. It’s none other than Three Finger and he has targeted the prisoners, running them off the road and throwing a knife through a prison guard’s neck. Chavez gets the guns and is now in control. They run into Alex and then discover millions of dollars in the back of an armored car that was in the woods for some reason. Chavez demands that everyone takes a couple bags and they move on but Three Toes jumps out and attacks. Chavez sends a message to Three Finger as he cuts off the head of Three Toes and leaves it behind for him to find. When Three Finger finds his son’s head, he screams in anguish but is quickly over it.
There is continued infighting in the group and a fight for control. It is very predictable. Nate teams up with wrongfully convicted murderer, Brandon, and seizes control from Chavez. He’s left to fight Three Finger as Brandon runs away to freedom and Nate tries to rescue Alex who was kidnapped by the mutant hillbilly. Despite Chavez being visibly bigger, stronger, and tough, somehow Three Finger wins the fight and kills him off, leading to a showdown between Nate, Alex and the killer hillbilly.
Nate and Alex appear to overcome that pesky mutant is durable. He takes a pole right through the chest and somehow makes it through and is able to get into the back of the truck that Nate and Alex are driving away with. The truck crashes and we get one big final fight between Nate and Three Finger, leading to the supposed death of the mutant hillbilly killer. Brandon returns to help and Nate looks the other way as he escapes. A romance is implied between Alex and Nate and we have a happy ending…or do we?
(SPOILER ALERT) OK, so, Three Finger is presumed dead, Alex and Nate are an item, wrongfully convicted murderer and overall nice guy, Brandon, is now free to start his life again. Throughout the film, these characters did the right thing for the right reason. Brandon proved his character by returning to help the two and Nate was the hero throughout the entire movie…but things change at the very end. Although most of the money would burn up, there was a substantial amount left. Nate goes to retrieve, makes an off color comment about his old friend Walter, and gets shot through the chest with an arrow. Brandon is the one that used the arrow to get the job done. He walks over to a dying Nate and makes a comment that you cannot trust a convict. He takes the money and what appears to be Three Finger appears, holding some weapon that he created. Brandon lets out a tremendous scream and we go into the ending credits.
WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD is a very strange entry in this series, but maybe it’s more of what this series is now that I think about it. Both the second and the sixth seemed to be like storylines forced into a WRONG TURN movie. I think some producer said “just add Three Finger” and that was that. This film takes elements from CON AIR and THE FUGITIVE and is not really a horror film for the majority of the flick. The cast is remarkable strong with Tamer Hassan, Tom Frederic and Janet Montgomery being notable standouts. This film suffers like the others in the series do with a lack of structure and loyalty to the source material. There was so little thought going into this film, with the focus being on the power struggle between Chavez and Nate. The characters were, for the most part, unlikable. As Three Finger knocked them off, there wasn’t any investment.
The CGI was distracting in this as it is in most of these films and they had a fixation with the pole. We saw three deaths via impalement in this entry. I also found it odd that Three Finger was driving a tow truck. I’m guessing he carjacked it or the same guy that pays for the Creeper’s from JEEPERS CREEPERS car insurance and payments pays for Three Finger. I was pretty disappointed overall with this one and the direction they opted for. The prisoners could have united, become better people, and could have seen this threat as something bigger than what they were, but they didn’t grow from the experience at all. They were all jerks and were mostly uninteresting.
Also, the threat of only one hillbilly rather than a group makes this film that much more difficult to connect to. There is a group of armed prisoners and trained police that have been combat tested against one mutant hillbilly. Sure, he knows the woods and has the element of surprise, but they should have been able to get to him and take him down without much concern.
WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD is better than the second entry, but not by a great deal. If you cut out Three Finger from the movie, you would see exactly what this movie was supposed to be…an action/drama about a prison escape. It feels like a fraud and plays out that way and the ending is a slap in the face to the viewer. They could have done a lot better than this for the 2 million dollar budget they had. On a positive note, some of the visuals were very good, including Crawford being dragged away while in barbwire and the final scene with Three Finger hanging onto the roof of a speeding truck, but there just isn’t anything else there.
Rating: 3.5/10
