Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead

The only reason I can think of this movie existing is because somebody out there hates me. Somebody out there, in the great yonder of film-making has such a furious, passionate fury against me that they assembled a terrible team of people to make a truly terrible movie. Let's look at the folk involved.

We've got Declan O'Brien directing, who is mainly known for a bunch of SyFy made for TV movies, including the upcoming spiritual successor to Snakes On A Plane called Sharktopus. Even if I have any inclination to seeing Sharktopus, it's only out of a masochistic fascination with bad movies.

Then we have the writers: Connor James Delaney, who has only done Wrong Turn 3, and characters by Alan B. McElroy, whose resume includes Rotten Tomatoes' worst movie of the decade, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, John Cena's feature film vehicle, The Marine and ther godawful Spawn.

Looking at that list, I'm actually starting to get an idea of why this movie exists. By putting all of these people together, we can have them all focus on one straight-to-DVD release, saving us from them spawning three individual movies. I, however, wasn't in on the joke, and I actually watched the movie they made together.

I generally try to understand and appreciate any movie I watch. For instance, I was the only person in the world who kind of liked X-Men Origins: Wolverine. In this case, it was clear from the beginning what kind of offensive to the senses and sensibilities this "film" is going to be.

Four "teens" (meaning twenty-something actors meant to be portraying teenagers in a horror flick") go rafting and settle on a place to camp. There, while the men go off to collect wood, the two girls lie back, and one (the one with the biggest boobs) takes off her top, prompting her friend to say "you're such an exhibitionist." One male returns, prompting the 2nd girl to leave while the boy lays down so the girl can straddle him. She asks if he thinks she's a slut and he says something along the lines of "Yes, but that's what I love about you, but I also love your tits." At this point, my fiancee asked me if we had picked up porn by mistake. That's before the inbred hillbilly shows up and shoots the girl from behind with a bow and arrow, directly through her nipple and into the guy's hand. As the boy runs off, the hillbilly aim, and fires another arrow, this time through the back of her skull, out her eye socket, prompting the killer to stroll over, pick the eye off the tip of the arrow, and eat it.

And that, in the first five minutes, is the best part of the movie. From there, things go from silly violent to honestly disturbing, all the while pretending to have an actually non-existent, underlying, humourous tone. There is mediocre, B-movie acting, a nonsensically unkillable villain (you would think that generations of inbreeding would make something fragile, not invulnerable), an inconsistent subvillain, and a Neo-Nazi. And, here are the three worst things about it.

3) The destination:

For most of the movie, the "hero" is leading a bunch of ragtag prisoners through the woods toward a ranger station that is supposed to hold a radio tower that will allow them to call for help. He even describes it, stating that they will have to climb a 60-foot ladder to get there, allowing our imaginations to go wild, looking forward to a climactic final confrontation either on, or at the top of, a precarious, deadly drop. Instead, when we get there, we find out that oh no, it must have burned down, so we'll just keep walking through the forest. I don't know if the production ran out of money or if the plan all along was to never show the station, but in either case, disappointing the audience is the last thing a movie this bad wants to do.

2) The women:

This isn't the first time that a horror movie could be accused of being misogynist, but this movie could be a textbook in a class about the subject. Starting with the unnecessary boob-flash and puncture at the beginning, we move onto near-constant threats of rape from the inmates and to the assumed rape of a female cop by the hillbilly as she is bound, naked, in barbed wire. Even though the convicts and the hillbilly are in opposition, the one thing they can agree on is that women are to be used for either recreation or procreation, and then disposed of, violently. It's blatant, it's disgusting, and it makes the movie all the worse.

1) The kid:

The hillbilly guy has a kid, who we cutely see try to help set one of his daddy's traps. It's twisted, but the connection bewteen the father and son is kind of touching. Then, when the trap fails, the convicts shoot the boy as he attacks them. This, again, I can understand, as it's a question of self defense. Then, the leader of the prisoners decides to, while the child is still alive, cut off its head and mount it on a post. Not only did this act confuse the attachments the viewers had with the characters (we don't want to see anyone win), it's just messed up to kill a kid, particularly in such a brutal way. There's shock value, and then there's carelessness with human life. If you devalue life the way this movie does, then it doesn't matter when people are killed, and that's when you get accused of making torture porn, which is exactly what this piece of crap is.

Rating: 1.0 stars