Movies
Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead (V)
“Sadly, Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead is about as abysmal as you can get for a sequel; if WT2 raised the bar, then WT3 lowers it right back down to where it was, and possibly a notch or two lower.”
Joe Lynch’s Wrong Turn 2 raised the bar for DTV sequels. It wasn’t perfect, but it was made with passion, relished in its “We don’t have to play in 3000 screens” fate, and was simply a damn fun time, with great kills and a fun cast. It also had its own identity apart from the more serious original film, so I was sort of intrigued by another creative team taking the reins for a 3rd film, hoping a filmmaker with style could deliver yet another new direction for the series. Sadly, Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead is about as abysmal as you can get for a sequel; if WT2 raised the bar, then WT3 lowers it right back down to where it was, and possibly a notch or two lower.
Absolutely nothing about this film works. Some of the ideas for kills are great, but they are all executed with the shittiest CGI this side of Van Helsing. And too many of the other kills are merely copies of the other films’; once again a character is “shockingly” dispatched by an arrow through the head. And the over-the-top nature of the kills doesn’t match the otherwise more serious tone of the film. In WT2, the characters were fun, largely good people. Here, we get a busload of prisoners, a generic cop, and Hills Run Red’s Janet Montgomery, who I thought was the best of the actors in that film but is absolutely atrocious here as the lone survivor of a group of kayakers who get dispatched in the film’s opener (which is about as good as the film gets).
And screenwriter Connor James Delaney should be ashamed of himself for the wholly logic-free bullshit this movie calls a plot. After a bus full of convicts and cops is rammed off the road by Three Finger, the cons somehow seize control and force the surviving cops to lead them to safety. But they stumble across an armored truck that also went off the road 50 years ago. Apparently, the bank/police never bothered to retrieve their fortunes (and the WT2 reality show team never stumbled across it either while outfitting the entire area with cameras?), so the cons and cops each carry two bags of loot. Of course, whenever someone dies their bags are handed to someone else, and by the end we have guys carrying 10 bags a piece, despite the fact that simply carrying two bags was an issue for some of the folks earlier in the film. We also have to believe that the police force would never even come close to rescuing anyone, even with another cop knowing that they took “Old Mill Road” as a shortcut. And that five prisoners (including a high ranking mobster) would be transferred in the middle of the night with an inexperienced cop in charge. And so on and so on. It’s not like any movie of this type is really steeped in logic, but Delaney isn’t even trying here.
He also inexplicably decides to A. keep the mutants that died in the last film dead (a first) and B. not introduce any new ones. Besides Three Finger, only Three Toe appears, and he is brutally murdered by one of the cons almost instantly. Given how abhorrent the convicts are, I’m actually pulling for the mutants this time around, so to kill off what is essentially a hungry kid in such vicious manner is just awful. Worse, this leaves only Three Finger, who has seemingly gained teleportation skills, and is even more indestructible than ever; I think he “comes back to life” about five times in this movie.
Plus it just feels horribly cheap. Everything from the sets (the “police task force” room is hilariously low-grade) to the opening titles to the acting (not a single recognizable face in the film save Montgomery; even Three Finger is played by a new guy) is as low-rent as you can get, and the horrid CGI and such doesn’t help. And the green-screens! Good Christ; at one point we see three shots from behind the driver (facing the road) in a scene of the bus driving, and it’s the same fucking patch of road every time, and poorly matched to boot (it also doesn’t match the speed of the road going by in the other shots). You would think after the better than average reception of WT2, that FOX would put some effort into this one seeing as it’s going to have a little more interest than the usual DTV sequel, but it’s the opposite; the production value of your average Full Moon sequel seems higher.
The saddest thing about it is that at its core is a potentially interesting story. Cops teaming up with criminals and regular folks against a common enemy – sound like Assault on Precinct 13 a bit? Hell, they even make an Assault-like pit stop at a ranger station prior to the crash; it would have been great to confine the film there and do something interesting (arrest the baby and have Three Finger and (hopefully) some others come down to reclaim him). Instead we get the umpteenth journey through the woods, without any of the class of the original or splatter-y fun of the sequel. O’Brien and Delaney have indeed put their own stamp on the series – they made the one that completely sucks.
Read BC’s longer and more spoiler-y review at Horror Movie A Day!
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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