Wrong Turn 3 - Left for Dead (2009) Directed by Declan O'Brien

Reviewed by Andy Bourne

It's open season on teenagers as Three Finger and his cannibalistic clan of inbred mutants hunt a group of hikers though the backwoods. When a prison transport bus crashes nearby, the fleeing convicts become the next items on the menu.

The third film in the 'Wrong Turn' series, following on from Joe Lynch's excellent self parody that was 'Wrong Turn 2 - Dead End', sees the 'franchise return to a more standard form of 'Hills Have Eyes' rip-off fair which epitamised the first film back in 2003.

Left for Dead sees a group of young, dumb college kids rafting into the backwoods lair of 'three fingers' and his deformed son's woodland lair, and setting up camp. We don't have to wait long for the killing to start ( a blessing when you compare this to 'Albino Farm's boring first 45 minutes) as the kids are chopped down. The one remaining survivor heads deeper into the woods to try and escape from her deformed hillbilly attackers, as the plot shifts to our next group of prepared victims in the form of Chavez ( Tamer Hassan ) and his group of escaped convicts who are, not only trying to avoid the booby traps and attacks from 'three fingers', but having found a ton of stolen money within the woods, are trying to avoid killing each other off for the loot.

What we are then left with is a bucketload of very gory killings. We here at Schlocking Towers are all for that, don't get me wrong,although what we see is quite imaginative and brutal, it also relies heavilly on one of our pet hates. CGI blood! As each of our characters are picked off one by one, the blood flows very freely, it just looks so damn false at times.

The performances, on the whole, are pretty good, although the standard plot set up was never going to call for much in the way of a performance. Tamer Hassan, as much as we love him here and in general, does not pull off an American accent at all well. But hey, this film isn't out to win awards. The action for all it's formulaic setting never faultered, kept moving at a good pace, and at least didn't take it's time in working it's way through the cast to it's 'twist' at the end.

One thing that I found strange was the writing in of the US Marshalls 'Rescue Team'. If I found myself trapped in a wood pursued by deformed hillbilly mutants, I wouldn't hold out for this useless bunch of hams to rescue me.

All in all, although not a patch on the second film ( It would have had to really pull out the stops to top the maniacal performance of Henry Rollins), Wrong Turn 3 - Left for Dead is a reasonably satisfying 'hillbilly splatter' film that never trys to punch above it's weight.

Just wish the CGI had been toned down!!