“Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead” Blu-ray Review
Apparently Fox has more faith in this series than its fans do, as the third installment in the series is undoubtedly its worst. It was also shot overseas with a low budget, helmed by a SyFy channel movie director and employed by some mediocre actors. How does this differ from the previous films, you ask? Well I guess it doesn’t really, but damn if it isn’t really noticeable this time around. I mean this film is simply embarrassing to watch as it puts itself through all of the predictable and cliché horror film paces, with breasts, gore, and dismemberment occurring so early into the film you wonder if there’s anything to stick around for. And guess what? There isn’t.
Synopsis
Three times the fear… three times the horror… three times the terror! Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment presents another frightening addition to the Wrong Turn franchise, when the unrated massacre Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead is unleashed exclusively on Blu-ray Disc (BD) and DVD October 20. Three Finger and his disturbed family of inbred cannibals are alive and well-fed in this terrifying, white-knuckle ride directed by Sci-Fi Channel movie veteran Declan O’Brien (Cyclops, Rock Monster).
I guess good horror films must be a pain to make, because major movie studios haven’t put out anything of value in years (that wasn’t a remake of something Japan did that was 20x better). Watching this film after Paranormal Activity was a giant mistake because A) that film was genuinely unsettling at times and B) this film was just made all the worse in comparison. I mean these two films share the same genre, right? Why are horror films so consistently horrible and not worth watching? Who is actually entertained by films like Wrong Turn 3? The first film…ok, I could see, maybe. It essentially cobbled together a series of mediocre films and made it into one big pile up and the sequel at least tried to be a bit more tongue in cheek about it. But the third film is basically the first film again but with stupider results.
So the gist of this film is that Three Finger (who still lives, because…that’s just the way he rolls) kills some campers at the start of the film and then he and his family have to deal with some escaped convicts that he himself runs off the road. The tagline of the movie is that these are hardened criminals and that they’ll be a tougher match for Three Finger than the usual shirt-poking buxom babes that run around his woods usually. Of course there are those this time still and those who end up surviving isn’t a great deal all that exciting…but then again, neither is the movie.
The major problem with this film, aside from the horrible green screen work and the convicts randomly finding a truck full of money in the woods (because that is what turns the cons against one another! Money! Always the money! Not the fact they’re being hunted by a cannibal freakshow!) is that it takes the whole scenario and concept so seriously. I mean sure, keep the survival horror movie serious…but only when it warrants that. This film is simply too idiotic, visually boring and too much of a copy and paste from the previous films in the series to work.
On top of that cannibal red neck mutants are just about the most annoying concept for a monster ever. Words cannot really describe how much I dislike this series in its entirety—at least Eliza Dushku made the first one moderately entertaining and the second one had a bit of humor to it…this third one is just pure garbage. Avoid this film.
The Blu-ray
Fox releases this film straight to DVD/Blu-ray in “unrated” form and with a big piece of cardboard glued to the cellophane for…some reason. Seriously I wish Fox would stop that, it serves no purpose that I can tell. On top of that there’s a sticker that says “All-New Movie! With Footage Too Gory For Theaters!” attached to the cover…eh? You were never in theaters, silly movie! You went straight to DVD/Blu-ray! I guess you could call it clever marketing to release a film that in its entirety is too gory for theaters…but really. There’s not enough gore here to really offend theaters…certainly not anymore than your average horror outing, at least.
Video arrives in the form of a AVC (@22mbps) encoded transfer that is relatively pleasant in appearance from the start of the film…but it ultimately turns to crap. See while the previous releases boasted interesting color palettes and a rich, earthy/brown tone throughout, this film is mostly taking place at night and as a result it is mostly devoid of color and instead riddle with a ridiculous amount of grain. So whatever detail is there to see it’s so smeared over by a lack of visual clarity and grain that it’s not worth checking out.
On top of that the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is also disappointing, simply because it made me enjoy the film a little bit. The film had such a solid track record of sucking in every category…but then the audio mix came along and splashed gooey sound effects around the room and provided some ample thuds to the woofer. Still not worth watching the film, however, but it at least makes it slightly easier to suffer through.
Extras include:
“Action, Gore and Chaos!” featurette
“Brothers in Blood” featurette
“Three Finger’s Fight Night” featurette
Deleted Scenes
Like the film, the extras all suck. All total it’s barely over twenty minutes of extras and not only are they all in standard definition, but you get to hear the director make stupid comments about his vision. There’s nothing about this film that I would actually admit to having a “vision” about. Except maybe that scene where the girl gets shot in the boob with an arrow. I guess someone had to have that vision, that’s not something you can really steal from other films (although the snake biting the girls boob in Snakes on a Plane was pretty close).
Whatever way you cut it, this movie and Blu-ray are not worth checking out at all. Skip It.
Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead is now available on Blu-ray.