When it made the rounds in various film festivals in 2006 and 2007, Hatchet was met with a degree of warmth from the genre press. Directed by Adam Green, it was hailed as a successful throwback to the slasher film era of the 1980s, albeit with its tongue planted in its cheek. It garnered enough success to even spawn a sequel which was infamously released into AMC theaters nationwide unrated and then yanked only a day later after complaints of the violence and gore. With all this hullaballoo, Hatchet piqued my interest as something that I would be willing to give a spin to. Unfortunately, I was very mistaken in my belief that it was worth the 1 hour and a half of my life that was consumed to watch Hatchet. Repetitive, silly, and completely lacking in suspense are what comes to my mind when I think of Hatchet, and that is being relatively kind to it.
I was a horror film fan in the 1980s, and readily watched various entries in the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, among others. While I would not consider any of them exemplary films by my current standards of quality, they still hold a special place in my memory as films that I enjoyed in my youth, perhaps for questionable reasons, but we are all adolescents at one point in our life. As I remember this period of filmmaking well, I can certainly recognize where Adam Green drew inspiration for Hatchet, but, frankly, he has assembled a film that is far more inept and valueless than even some of the worst 80s slasher films.
The plot, of which there is little, goes as follows: Ben (Joel David Moore) and his friend Marcus (Deon Richmond) are visiting Mardi Gras in New Orleans to help Ben take his mind off a recent bad breakup. Ben grows weary of the endless stream of booze and topless women that the French Quarter has to offer up and convinces Marcus to join him on a "Haunted Swamp" tour. The tour is run by shady guide Shawn (Parry Shen), and includes an older couple (Richard Riehle, Patricia Darbo), a porn movie director (Joel Murray), his two "actresses" (Mercedes McNabb, Joleigh Fioravanti) who are often sans shirts, and one quiet withdrawn young woman, Marybeth (Tamara Feldman). They all pile in a boat on the edge of the swamp, venture in, the boat wrecks on some rocks and then when they have to evacuate, Marybeth reveals that the swamp is the hunting ground of Victor Crowley, the ghost of a young deformed boy who was accidentally killed by his loving father when he was a child. Shockingly, Victor Crowley (or his ghost) is not exactly child sized any more, and possesses enough brute strength to off anyone who enters his woods in various gruesome ways. It becomes a race against time for the various shipwrecked individuals to make their way back to civilization with all body parts intact.
If you are interested in watching a film put forth a great deal of effort to create some of the goriest, most over the top, no holds barred violent death scenes in recent memory, then pop Hatchet in the DVD player, sit back and enjoy. Hatchet is a gorehound's wet dream, with each death more outrageous than the last, often intercut with shots of blood and viscera splashing onto nearby trees. However, if you like suspense, tension, vaguely interesting characters or most of the other elements that make up a good movie, then keep on moving, nothing to see here. Hatchet accomplishes the quite amazing feat of becoming monotonous within the first 20 minutes, as we are treated to the film's shoddy attempts to set up the characters with some jokey humor, and while there are a few chuckles here and there, most of it falls flat on its face. Once the film reaches the swamp, you can be forgiven for at least thinking there would be lip service paid to providing a few scares to go along with the copious bloodletting, but aside from one or two "Boo" moments, Hatchet manages to completely fail in that department as well.
What's worse is that even when Hatchet is aping some of the cornerstone elements of slasher films, what ends up on the screen is amateurish at best. The token flashback scene to Victor's youth and tragic accident comes off as if it was filmed by some teenagers making their own horror film in their backyard, and once Victor Crowley is revealed, he more or less just repeatedly jumps out of bushes and eviscerates the nearest victim. No buildup, no sense of dread, just a big guy in a bunch of latex making fast work of the cast one by one. There is no moment of concern for any of the characters, they are more or less types, and nothing about them proves interesting or endearing in the slightest. They exist to provide raw material for the film's violence, nothing more.
The actors are generally competent, there are a few cameos that will make horror film aficionados chuckle to themselves, the special makeup effects are impressive at times and the camera work doesn't descend into the shaky cam trend that has become the norm in some horror films, but that is about all I can say positive about Hatchet. Unless you are there to see the buckets of gore, it provides nothing of value to the audience, except for the realization at the end that perhaps you might not see a movie as bad as Hatchet again any time soon.
I was a horror film fan in the 1980s, and readily watched various entries in the Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, among others. While I would not consider any of them exemplary films by my current standards of quality, they still hold a special place in my memory as films that I enjoyed in my youth, perhaps for questionable reasons, but we are all adolescents at one point in our life. As I remember this period of filmmaking well, I can certainly recognize where Adam Green drew inspiration for Hatchet, but, frankly, he has assembled a film that is far more inept and valueless than even some of the worst 80s slasher films.
The plot, of which there is little, goes as follows: Ben (Joel David Moore) and his friend Marcus (Deon Richmond) are visiting Mardi Gras in New Orleans to help Ben take his mind off a recent bad breakup. Ben grows weary of the endless stream of booze and topless women that the French Quarter has to offer up and convinces Marcus to join him on a "Haunted Swamp" tour. The tour is run by shady guide Shawn (Parry Shen), and includes an older couple (Richard Riehle, Patricia Darbo), a porn movie director (Joel Murray), his two "actresses" (Mercedes McNabb, Joleigh Fioravanti) who are often sans shirts, and one quiet withdrawn young woman, Marybeth (Tamara Feldman). They all pile in a boat on the edge of the swamp, venture in, the boat wrecks on some rocks and then when they have to evacuate, Marybeth reveals that the swamp is the hunting ground of Victor Crowley, the ghost of a young deformed boy who was accidentally killed by his loving father when he was a child. Shockingly, Victor Crowley (or his ghost) is not exactly child sized any more, and possesses enough brute strength to off anyone who enters his woods in various gruesome ways. It becomes a race against time for the various shipwrecked individuals to make their way back to civilization with all body parts intact.
If you are interested in watching a film put forth a great deal of effort to create some of the goriest, most over the top, no holds barred violent death scenes in recent memory, then pop Hatchet in the DVD player, sit back and enjoy. Hatchet is a gorehound's wet dream, with each death more outrageous than the last, often intercut with shots of blood and viscera splashing onto nearby trees. However, if you like suspense, tension, vaguely interesting characters or most of the other elements that make up a good movie, then keep on moving, nothing to see here. Hatchet accomplishes the quite amazing feat of becoming monotonous within the first 20 minutes, as we are treated to the film's shoddy attempts to set up the characters with some jokey humor, and while there are a few chuckles here and there, most of it falls flat on its face. Once the film reaches the swamp, you can be forgiven for at least thinking there would be lip service paid to providing a few scares to go along with the copious bloodletting, but aside from one or two "Boo" moments, Hatchet manages to completely fail in that department as well.
What's worse is that even when Hatchet is aping some of the cornerstone elements of slasher films, what ends up on the screen is amateurish at best. The token flashback scene to Victor's youth and tragic accident comes off as if it was filmed by some teenagers making their own horror film in their backyard, and once Victor Crowley is revealed, he more or less just repeatedly jumps out of bushes and eviscerates the nearest victim. No buildup, no sense of dread, just a big guy in a bunch of latex making fast work of the cast one by one. There is no moment of concern for any of the characters, they are more or less types, and nothing about them proves interesting or endearing in the slightest. They exist to provide raw material for the film's violence, nothing more.
The actors are generally competent, there are a few cameos that will make horror film aficionados chuckle to themselves, the special makeup effects are impressive at times and the camera work doesn't descend into the shaky cam trend that has become the norm in some horror films, but that is about all I can say positive about Hatchet. Unless you are there to see the buckets of gore, it provides nothing of value to the audience, except for the realization at the end that perhaps you might not see a movie as bad as Hatchet again any time soon.