Review: Hatchet (2006)

Hatchet (2006)

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, sexual content, nudity and language (unrated version reviewed)

Score: 4 out of 5

The poster for Hatchet promises "old school American horror" that isn't a remake, a sequel, or "based on a Japanese one", a throwback to the violent backwoods slasher flicks of the '80s with more modern gore effects and a dash of self-awareness but much the same irreverent grindhouse spirit. It's a story we've heard before from so many other modern retro-styled slashers, but there's a reason why "modern retro-styled slashers" were such a big trend in indie horror after this came out that the subgenre eventually got driven into the ground. This one succeeds where many of them have failed by being less a direct, warts-and-all imitation of its predecessors and more an attempt to recapture how people nostalgically remember those films; instead of sinking into a mire of in-jokes (though the film does boast appearances from multiple horror legends), "meta" commentary on the genre, and hackneyed dialogue and characters that we're supposed to excuse because the movie's deliberately stupid, it focuses on being an exceptionally bloody mess that never takes itself too seriously, is loaded with dark jokes at the expense of its doomed cast of characters, and isn't that scary but makes up for it with unbelievably bloody kills that are designed to alternatively shock and amaze viewers. This is a film made for, and by, slasher fans, and easily one of the better examples of the genre to come out in the last twenty years.

The backstory concerns Victor Crowley, a hideously deformed young boy raised in the Louisiana bayou who died when a group of local boys threw fireworks into his house as a prank, his father accidentally killing him while trying to rescue him. This being a slasher movie, of course you know he didn't really die, and ever since that fateful night, a certain section of the bayou has been closed off to fishermen and tourists on account of unexplained disappearances. Sure enough, a "haunted swamp tour" carrying a bunch of tourists visiting New Orleans during Mardi Gras accidentally ventures into Crowley territory, where the untrained tour guide Shawn accidentally crashes the boat and leaves everyone stranded. Fortunately for them, one of the tourists, Marybeth, is actually a local who's searching for her father and brother, who went missing in the bayou while fishing (actually killed in the opening scene) and came prepared to fight and kill Victor. Unfortunately, it's gonna take a lot more than bullets to pull that off.

The star of the show is, of course, Victor Crowley himself. He's played by Kane Hodder, who managed to elevate even some of the worst Friday the 13th movies by serving as one of the best actors/stuntmen to ever play Jason Voorhees, and here, he finally gets the opportunity to show what he's made of, without the MPAA breathing down the editors' necks. Victor is a hideous monster of a man who kills multiple people with just his bare hands, and when he does so, you get the sense that he can actually do it and that it isn't just editing tricks creating the illusion of a guy who can rip a woman's head open. Weapons, of course, are a necessity for any good slasher killer's arsenal, and he gets a diverse collection of murder implements that include a shovel, a belt sander, a chunk of rebar that he hurls like a javelin, and of course, that nice double-ended hatchet you see on the poster. Every one of them is used creatively to inflict painful and often fatal injuries on Victor's victims, with highlights including an impalement, a woman getting her lower jaw skinned, and a man getting cut in half diagonally with several well-placed chops. The film did not skimp on any of it, either; I watched the unrated cut that contained a minute of extra gore, and it earned the right to call itself a true unrated cut, the effects work being top-quality and the camera putting it into sharp focus. John Carl Buechler, a longtime special effects wizard (who also cameos as the obligatory "you're dooooomed!" guy), felt like he was finally getting to show off all the grisly kills that they had to cut from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, like a kid in a candy store, and director Adam Green was more than happy to oblige. Unlike with Green's Frozen, suspense is not really the name of the game here; Victor is here not to carefully stalk his prey from the shadows, but to whoop ass and take names, and what the film sacrifices in creeping dread it makes up for with a breakneck pace once the mayhem really starts. It knows what viewers are here for, and it delivers.

Which is why it was a bit of a surprise that, after a grisly opening kill, the film takes its sweet time getting us back into the bayou... and even more of a surprise that I actually didn't really mind this, especially given how Green's Frozen had the same issue but suffered more for it. The rather lengthy first act is driven mostly by comedy rather than horror, as the protagonists all find their way around New Orleans and assemble for the swamp tour. Ben and Marcus are a pair of young bros who are there for Mardi Gras, I went into more detail on our female lead Marybeth earlier, Jim and Shannon are an older, extremely corny Midwestern couple, Doug Shapiro is the sleazy creator of a Girls Gone Wild-esque adult video series, Jenna and Misty are the two girls he's working with (the former a stuck-up prima donna and the latter a ditzy airhead), and Shawn is the tour guide who's only in it for the money and has no idea what he is doing. Where this film succeeds with its lengthy introduction to our protagonists is that it takes the route of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and uses this introduction for more than just our obligatory "twenty minutes with jerks" designed to show us the ropes. It doesn't really develop them far beyond their archetypes, but it does have fun, playing as a raunchy comedy where their interactions are mined for some pretty good laughs. Jim has to pretend in front of Shannon that he has no idea who Doug is or what his films are about (it's not entirely convincing), Shawn starts to slowly lose it and slip out of his faux-Cajun accent as the tour goes to hell even before he crashes the boat, and Jenna is clearly not happy that her dreams of becoming an actress have culminated in a Bayou Beavers softcore skin flick. Marybeth is the lone "serious" character among them, rightly so given her backstory, and appropriately enough, she spends most of the first act out of focus. Tamara Feldman (who now goes by her birth name Amara Zaragosa) made for a very good final girl as Marybeth; while her Southern accent is shaky, her performance overall is solid enough to carry the film as the one who ultimately faces Victor down in the end. The rest of the acting is broad, but none of it was bad; they were going for a lighthearted, larger-than-life tone here, and they all pulled off what they had to do. Even after the body parts start flying, the film is just campy enough that it never turns grim, the latter half feeling like a logical extension of the first half with how it still managed to work in a number of good character-driven jokes as their numbers dwindle.

The Bottom Line

Hatchet delivers what it promises, with fairly little fat. As far as 2000s horror goes, this may not feel particularly revolutionary, but as a well-made body-count slasher, it brings the pain even if it doesn't have many tricks up its sleeve. If you've got friends who enjoy bloody horror, this is a great party movie.