WRONG TURN 3: LEFT FOR DEAD

Nate Wilson is a young prison guard who is given the task of escorting a group of dangerous inmates to a maximum-security prison. Unfortunately, during the journey in the armored van, a pickup truck suddenly appears out of nowhere and sends the guards and criminals off the road. Both groups now find themselves in the middle of the woods and will have to join forces, because they will soon discover that they are not alone, that someone is spying on them among the trees... someone deformed and more dangerous than them... Bad and deformed mutants return to strike and deliver cuts: Act Three. The saga launched by Rob Schmidt and Stan Winston in 2003 with the excellent "Wrong Turn" and continued with the equally successful (and hilarious, at least for me) "Wrong Turn 2-Senza Via D’Uscita" by Joe Lynch reaches its third chapter, once again for the home video market. A well-chosen, if not necessary, distribution choice, because Declan O’Brien’s film, although watchable (especially in company and with a lot of beer in the body), immediately reveals itself as the weakest episode of the entire trilogy. The means available have been reduced and not a little, explaining both the presence of almost only one mutant (an old acquaintance, by the way) throughout the film, and the use of annoying and inadequate CGI for some of the gore effects present in the film. The mutant’s makeup itself appears less credible and more rubbery than it should, representing two steps back from what was done in the original (which boasted the best characterization of the saga’s boogeymen) and one step back from the immediate predecessor as well. The film is watchable, at times makes you smile, and the tripe festival is guaranteed this time too, but what leaves something to be desired is the often and willingly approximate and hasty staging, as if everything had been put together without the right time and care. The screenplay itself, which seems to want to introduce something "new and original" (note the quotation marks), turns out to be weak and superficial: nice the idea of a prologue with a massacre that forms a kind of short film connecting the second and third films, which sees as protagonists the classic medium-mad characters of the American slasher in order to immediately get rid of them and leave room for a group of protagonists who are, all in all, less used. At the center of the story, and similarly to what was done in the heavy (in the sense of boring) "House of Blood" by Olaf Ittenbach, we find a group of prisoners and their guards: this idea is not new either, but in these times and in this sub-genre, it should be all that can be desired. However, it is a shame to note that the "bad-more bad-baddest" game that the screenwriter Connor James Delaney wants collapses quickly on itself: everyone wants to screw everyone and quickly falls into repetition. The psychologies cut with an axe, between policemen who are too good and naive, the girl who starts as a designated victim and then gradually pulls out the attributes and the very bad prisoner without scruples, ready to sacrifice anyone to save his skin. Trying to avoid the classic clichés related to teenagers within slasher films, Connor James Delaney has run into another kind of topoi, which, if nothing else, are seen less within our favorite genre. Beyond these defects at the writing level, "Wrong Turn 3" brings to the screen a smooth story (except for a slowdown in rhythm three-quarters of the way through the film) and at times funny, which sees its strongest point in the various killings. Those two or three traps that represent a novelty within the saga make you smile, but in general, the gore department proves imaginative and will likely not disappoint lovers of blood at all costs. It is only a shame for the too invasive use of CGI that undermines the credibility of the killings, but there is something for everyone: people cut into pieces, arrows that pierce heads (and breasts!!!), torn-off skulls, and butcher’s hooks all over the place are the order of the day. Direction and photography do not offer particularly interesting elements, limiting themselves to bringing home a routine job, without infamy and without praise, while the cast’s performance is at the average levels of genre productions: only Tamer Hassan, in the role of the very bad Chavez, seems to try a little more than the others to play the bastard of the situation. Overall, "Wrong Turn 3" is a film that reaches sufficiency, ideal for those who have become attached to the saga of deformed mutants or to spend an evening in the company of trusted friends, but, either for a certain superficiality in the staging or for a screenplay that is anything but bomb-proof (ah, the euphemisms), it remains the weak point of the trilogy.