Gore-hounds will enjoy the gruesome kills and horror fans will dig the cameos from genre vets like Robert Englund and Tony Todd.
Ben (Joel David Moore) and his college buddies have traveled to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras. Ben, however, isn’t feeling particularly festive. Having just broken up with his girlfriend, he finds the mindless partying lame. Eager to do something different, he convinces Marcus (Deon Richmond) to take a swamp ghost tour with him. On the tour, they meet a diverse group of people including two soft-core porn actresses (Mercedes McNab and Joleigh Fiore), their director (Joel Murray,) and an older couple (Richard Riehle and Patrika Darbo.) Marybeth (Tamara Feldman,) a young woman searching for her father and brother who were lost in the swamp, sits alone.
Thanks to an inexperienced guide (Parry Shen), the ghost tour ends when their boat bottoms-out and gets stuck. Marybeth informs the group that they’re all in danger. Not just because of the many alligators in the swamp. There’s also Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder,) a ghost thought to haunt the bayou. Crowley is the vengeful spirit of a disfigured man killed in an accident by his father. The legend says that Crowley hunts people out of anger due to the way he was treated as a boy. Of course, Crowley shows up and begins killing off the tour guests one-by-one.
When Hatchet was released, it was billed as a return of the old school slasher movie. There’s some truth to that as the movie is as basic as it comes. A group of (mostly) young people ventures into the swamp and are hunted by a maniac. But along with that simplistic plot there’s also the return of the old school slasher movie tropes. Although the script by Adam Green occasionally reveals a self-awareness of slasher movie cliches, the movie falls into the same traps that plague most entries into the genre. Mainly, ridiculous decision-making and physically impossible feats performed by the killer. (I.e. The killer falling down and then suddenly appearing in front of the people running away from him.)
Hatchet tries to be funny and its easy to write off the many cliches as humor or attempts at parody. Unfortunately, they’re not unique or funny enough to overcome their similarities to non-comedic horror fare. For example, Marcus makes a joke about why he — a black man — and Shawn, the Asian American tour guide, have to carry the wounded white guy. While it acknowledges the fact that this frequently happens in slasher films, it still happens in Hatchet. Other than referencing it for the sake of a chuckle, the script offers nothing interesting to say about the trope.
While it technically is a slasher film, it’s not a very good one. Gore-hounds will enjoy the gruesome kills and horror fans will dig the cameos from genre vets like Robert Englund and Tony Todd. But those may be the only redeeming qualities of Hatchet.
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
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