It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month. Today I’m reviewing three for the price of one... who loves ya, baby?
Hatchet (2006)
Harry Knowles proclaimed the killer in Hatchet would be “the next icon of horror.” It’s safe to say Harry jumped the gun just a little. Perhaps Victor Crowley is more memorable than the average villain, but he certainly doesn’t hold a candle to Freddy or Jason. Nonetheless, Hatchet is better than some of the Freddy and Jason sequels.
Hatchet opens with Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) playing a hillbilly who’s hunting gators in a New Orleans swamp. Instead of letting Englund and Kane Hodder (Crowley) share screen time, Englund’s character is killed off screen, which is frustrating. Tony Todd (Candyman) makes a cameo later on and you can practically read his thoughts: “Why the hell am I in a talking scene? Couldn’t they at least give me somebody to kill?”
That’s my biggest beef: there’s certainly cool stuff in Hatchet, but most of the time it reaches for greatness and stumbles over its juvenile sensibilities. I’ll give it a pass for not putting Englund and Todd to better use—the filmmakers probably didn’t have the money to use the established actors for any more than a day of shooting.
Here’s where the filmmakers don’t get a pass: the movie looks goddamn terrible. Even though it’s shot on film, the copy I watched looked more like Thankskilling than the grainy B-movies the director wishes to emulate. The woods and swamps are lit so brightly it’s hilarious when one of the characters suggests a flashlight. The opening scenes, set during Mardi Gras, look as technically competent as the cinematography on a Girls Gone Wild DVD.
And although I adore horror-comedies, the jokes in Hatchet are simply bad. The only type of humor I hate more than characters being inexplicably clumsy is forcing characters to say ridiculous things just for the sake of comedic relief. “Hey, it’s like that time you caught crabs!” “What’s 911’s area code in the south?” When one character tells another to blow her dad, the response is, “I will as soon as you’re finished!” Ooo, burn.
This really hurts because there are decent comedians involved. Joel Murray (a godsend in God Bless America) and Richard Riehle (the guy who invented the “Jump To Conclusions” mat in Office Space) have bigger roles than you would expect in a slasher flick, but instead of elevating the material, they’re bogged down in the mire of forced jokes. Outside of the over-the-top kills, I laughed maybe once. The scene responsible involved a close-up of a very attractive woman scratching her crotch in a very unladylike manner.
On the other hand, the sound effects are great and the splatter is pitch perfect. I’m only disappointed there’s so little of it. We get a decent kill right out of the gate, but the movie drags on and on until the next one. In case you’re the type to fast forward through the boring parts, I checked: the movie doesn’t pick up again until the 49-minute mark. But man, I’ve never seen a belt sander used like that before.
It’s worth noting I was frequently reminded of the movie that more or less built Miramax: The Burning. Like that film (and some spoilers for both movies follow), I eventually felt sorry for the bad guy. Hatchet’s origin story also involves an accident with fire; the directors of both films concoct far-fetched ways of setting their antagonists ablaze in the climax. I’m mostly desensitized to this kind of stuff, but setting a burn victim on fire just seems needlessly cruel.
So yeah, Hatchet is a must-see for gore aficionados. Everyone else should skip it. Spoilers below.
Hatchet 2 (2010)
I love it when a sequel picks up exactly where the original left off. Like Back to the Future 2 and Waxwork 2, Hatchet 2 not only provides a seamless continuance, it replaces its lead female with a different actress entirely. This time Marybeth is played by Danielle Harris (The Last Boy Scout, Halloween 4). Harris is not the best screamer in the world, but she exudes all the other qualities we expect from a final girl, which is rare these days.
When we last saw Marybeth, she’d been caught in the killer’s grip, presumably doomed. Within seconds of Hatchet 2’s opening, she gouges one of his eyes out, affording her a chance to swim away. One pathetic jump-scare later, she’s rescued by the piss-drinker from the first film. Already the film looks better than the original and although the lame jokes are still present, there aren’t as many of them. There are some okay jokes, too. I’m guessing the director stopped smoking so much pot before he made this one.
The piss-drinker tells Marybeth not to call the cops (because that’s certainly logical) and sends her on her way to Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd) who also tells her not to call the cops (convenient). Instead, he assembles a ragtag crew of hunters in a scene which involves a Lloyd Kaufman cameo and expands on Crowley’s origin story. Although this sequel takes even longer getting to the good stuff, it’s not as boring and the payoff is sweet.
So when asked why he wants to bring so many hunters along, Tony Todd’s character replies, “Safety in numbers.” And yet, within minutes of arriving at the swamp, Todd tells everyone to split up. Yeah, it’s one of those movies, but the obligatory sex scene which results from this bad decision had me dying with laughter. It’s like something out of Eli Roth’s fake Thanksgiving trailer and, uh, the sound effects are… well, brilliant. This sex scene also provides one of the few dialogue jokes that work in the entire movie.
To say Hatchet 2 is an improvement is like saying a cold is better to get than the flu. It’s easily twice as capable as its predecessor. That says more about how disappointing the first one was, but any old school horror junkie should see it. Todd and Harris, by the way, have strong chemistry and screen presence.
Spoilers for Hatchet 3 follow…
Hatchet 3 (2013)
I wish I could say Hatchet 3 is three times as good as the first, but I’m not a liar. It’s not as good as the previous entry, but I can’t say I would have been disappointed had I gone to a theater to see it. Gone are the really lame jokes (for the most part) and we finally see cops enter the mix, which means they had a bigger budget. Although cops were strangely absent from the first two features, this time there are way too many of them to retain the 80s throwback vibe.
Again, the filmmakers pick up exactly where they left off. Shell-shocked from the events of the last two films, Marybeth scalps Crowley’s dead body and wanders, in a daze, into the local police station. After a firehose-shower scene which bares surprisingly little skin, she’s thrown into a cell where she tells the sheriff (Gremlins star Zach Galligan) her story and where to find the twenty or thirty bodies from the previous films.
Although Hatchet 2 was enhanced by the fact it had a kick-ass heroine, this one seems determined to keep its most interesting character locked up. Spoiler: her handcuffs don’t even come off until the end of the film. Better than being sidelined entirely, but still.
I expected to see Galligan and Harris share more screen time. I was disappointed they go their separate ways early on, thereon appearing to be in entirely different films. The stuff with Galligan is what horror fans wanted to see. The stuff with Harris is meandering bullshit with too much yapping. Why is it that so many genre films pretend they don’t want to be taken seriously, then go and throw in ungodly amounts of by-the-numbers exposition into them? When will these movies finally realize they don’t need to be “normal?” There’s just so much padding here—stuff we’ve seen in a hundred times.
As for Galligan’s half of the film, there are a lot more kills and a lot less nudity (practically none at all), but the saddest adjustment to the formula is it just doesn’t pack the punch that part 2 did. I was legitimately excited when I saw Tony Todd’s character go mano a mano with Crowley, but there’s nothing as exciting in this one. Sure, I loved what Crowley did with a defibrillator, but if the filmmakers really think a belt sander can produce that many sparks, they need their heads examined. (Although I admit: the sparks looked pretty damn cool).
Hatchet 3 is a prime example of quantity over quality. The gore gags, as always, are top notch, but Crowley is growing fatigued. He’s less likely to take his time. More likely to just rip off your head.
Zach Galligan is probably the reason Waxwork 3 was never made. He said, at the time, he didn’t want to get typecast in horror movies. Now that he’s taking every single horror movie they toss his way, I really wish he had made that movie instead of this one. Rather, I wish he had made that and this because I like to see the guy in anything.
Hatchet 3 is not a terrible movie for gore junkies. I’d be mildly interested in a fourth entry, but let’s face it, it’s probably only downhill from here.
Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.
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