Wrong Turn (film series)

Wrong Turn is a franchise of six American slasher horror films created by Alan B. McElroy and distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. All six films follows various families of deformed cannibals who hunt a group of people in West Virginia by killing them all in horrific ways and using a mixture of traps and weaponry for food. Three cannibals who have appeared in every Wrong Turn films are: Three Finger, Saw Tooth, and One Eye. The first two films of the series was released theatrically, while later installments were released directly on DVD up until 2014.

Films

Wrong Turn (2003)

In the first film, a group of six friends are stalked by One Eye, Saw Tooth and Three Finger. Chris Flynn (Desmond Harrington) is forced to make a detour after a chemical spillage on the road he had been travelling. He then makes a wrong turn and crashes into another vehicle which had already fallen victim to one of the family's road traps. Whilst searching for help the group discover the cabin belonging to the three inbreds.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)

The second film introduces a larger family of inbreds: Ma, Pa, Brother and Sister. Three Finger and the Old Man are the only returning characters from the first film. This time, the inbreds hunt down a group of reality show contestants who are taking part on a survival reality show. The Old Man from the first film plays a much more dominant role in this one. It's discovered that he is in fact affiliated with the inbreds, completely changing the meaning of his role in the first movie.

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead features a group of prison officers and escaped convicts after the returning character Three Finger caused their transport bus to crash, allowing them to escape and take the surviving prison officers, Nate (Tom Frederic) and Walter (Chucky Venn) prisoner. Whilst fleeing, the convicts and their prisoners stumble across both a lost truck which had been transporting thousands of dollars, and Alex Hale (Janet Montgomery), who has been lost in the woods after Three Finger killed the rest of her friends. Eventually, Three-Toes (Three Finger's son) is killed by Nate and Alex. Three Finger finds Three-Toes's severed head, which makes him furious. He creates a shrine and leaves the head on display in his cabin. The one surviving convict, Brandon, convinces Nate that he was innocent all along, and in turn is allowed to go free. Sometime later, Nate greedily returns to collect the remaining cash from the armored truck. Brandon appears and betrays Nate, shooting him in the back with an arrow. While Brandon is collecting the cash, a cannibal comes up behind him, holding a crude club, and kills him. The identity of the cannibal is unclear. Alex is the only survivor of this film. It was revealed in the director's commentary for Wrong Turn 4 that Three Finger died in the ending of Wrong Turn 3.

Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings (2011)

It focuses on a group of nine teenagers which take a wrong turn while riding their snowmobiles looking for their cabin. They end up in an old abandoned insane asylum which is still inhabited by Three Finger, Saw Tooth and One Eye. (The film provides back story to the three original killers and shows their childhood. It also shows how the three brothers and several other mutants escaped.) The group of friends decide to spend the night in the asylum and they are attacked by the three brothers. By the end of the film, only two of the friends remain, but they are killed after they accidentally ride into a barbed wire fence whilst escaping. Their severed heads are shown flying through the air before Three Finger picks them up, throws them in the back of his truck, and drives away.

Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012)

It is revealed that Maynard is a serial killer who has been on the run for over thirty years, and is now in cahoots with the three cannibal brothers. He repeatedly refers to them as 'my boys' and his kin. Throughout the course of the film, the brothers attempt to break out Maynard and kill off the college students and Sheriff Angela Carter (Camilla Arfwedson), whilst the rest of the town are at the festival. The film ends with Maynard and the three brothers escaping with the blinded Lita (Roxanne McKee) as a captive.

Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014)

In the sixth installment Danny (Anthony Ilott) discovers his long lost family as he takes his friends to Hobb Springs, a Forgotten resort deep into West Virginia Hills. Danny then chooses his family as his friends are being killed by his family one by one. Danny then becomes a Hillicker and has sex with Sally (Sadie Katz) at the end of the film abandoning his friends leaving them to die.

Film overview

The Wrong Turn film series has featured several different cannibals. All of the cannibals are hostile toward unrelated humans they encounter, showing no remorse for their victims. The cannibals are shown generally mute but still show the ability to communicate with each other. The also show the mental capability to operate machinery and vehicles. The cannibals stay with each other in groups and appear to be the result of consistent inbreeding.

Cannibals

Three Finger

Three Finger is the main antagonist of the Wrong Turn film series. He is a cannibal with great physical deformity caused by toxic chemicals he was exposed to at birth, alongside his two brothers. He is a skilled trap maker, crafting his traps so well that they often kill his victims before he can enact horrific acts of violence upon them.

• In Wrong Turn he made his first appearance alongside his two brothers, attacking the medical student, Chris Flynn and the group of friends including Jessie Burlingame, Carly Marquez, Scott, Evan, and Francine, However, in the end of the film, Three Finger manages to survive as he was last seen killing the deputy sheriff as he investigates the destroyed cabin. However, his brothers were presumably dead.
• In Wrong Turn 2: Dead End , he is seen killing Kimberly by cutting her in half with the help of Brother, a member of the cannibal family. Then, he and the mutant family begin their brutal assault on the rest of the contestants as he successfully killed Neil, a television crew member and captured Colonel Dale Murphy with the help of Pa. Later, he was seen torturing Dale in his cabin but Dale somehow manages to escape before engaging Three Finger in the knife fight. During the fight, Dale manages to shoot Three Finger in the chest with a shotgun and as the result, he was presumed dead, but he survives.
• In Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead, he is trying to kill a group of hikers and prisoners, and he is killed at the end of the film, stabbed in the head with his hook and blown up on top of a car.
• In Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings and Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines he is an antagonist alongside his two original brothers. During the series, he has been blown up, stabbed, impaled, and shot various times, and yet survived; he is also very skillful at creating traps that will instantly kill the victims before he finishes his cruel job on them. In addition, he also has the unnatural ability of regenerating.
• In Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort he returns alongside his two original brothers.

Saw Tooth

Saw Tooth, like his two brothers, first appears in Wrong Turn. He is the biggest and strongest of the family. He is killed at the end of the first film and does not appear again until the first prequel, Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings, Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines and then Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort.

One Eye

First appears in Wrong Turn. Just like Saw Tooth, he dies in the first film, and does not make another appearance until the fourth, fifth and sixth film.

Other Cannibals

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End introduces a family of four cannibals called Ma, Pa, Brother and Sister. The two young siblings are shown to have an incestuous relationship; Sister even gets extremely jealous and angry when she catches Brother masturbating while spying a human girl. Ma gives birth to a mutant baby (Three Finger's son) before she (and the rest of her family) is killed. The second film ends with Three Finger caring for the baby. The baby becomes known as Three Toes in Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead. Three Toes is killed by a group of convicts, and his head left as a warning. Three Finger finds Three Toes' severed head, which makes him furious. He creates a shrine and leaves the head on display in his cabin.

Characters

* A dark grey cell indicates the character was not in the film.

Reception

• Wrong Turn received mixed reviews, with a 40% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and from other critics.
• Wrong Turn 2: Dead End received positive reviews. It currently holds a 78% fresh rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 9 reviews and is the highest rated film in the series. Steve Barton of Dread Central gave the film 4 out of 5 stars stating that the film "is a hot ticket for some gore-soaked backwoods mayhem that gets even better with repeated viewings and lots of booze". Bloody Disgusting stated that "what could have been a cheap and lazy cash-in turned out to be one of the year’s better genre offerings".

• Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead: Although the third film was a commercial success, the reaction to this film was mainly negative. All four of the reviews reported by Rotten Tomatoes are counted as negative.^[1] Bloody Disgusting said "If WT2 raised the bar, then WT3 lowers it right back down to where it was and possibly a notch or two lower."
• Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings entered the DVD chart at number 13, selling 45,928 copies in its first week. To date the film has sold 143,000 units in America. The fourth film received 20% rating from Rotten Tomatoes.
• Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines: Like the previous installments, received largely negative reviews. The film was criticized for the special effects and the story line, however it was praised for Doug Bradley's performance.
• Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort: this film received largely negative reviews. The film was criticized for its storyline, characters and acting, however it was praised for Sadie Katz's performance.

References