After my initial foray into Adam Green’s movie writing and directing ability with Frozen, saying I was excited to watch Hatchet would be an understatement. Then I found out that Hatchet was actually made before Frozen. That could only mean one of three things; he has progressively gotten more ridiculous in his movie writing and directing, toned down the ridiculousness or remained constant in his ridiculousness. Needless to say shortly into the movie it’s clear that Green, like a masterful chef, has refined his art of ridiculousness over time to make it more subtle. The tagline of the movie is “Old School American Horror”, but it should have read more like “Every Element of Old School American Horror Movies Combined But Not As Good” Not my most clever moment but lets get to it.
Ben (Joel David Moore), Marcus (Deon Richmond) and their group of friends are in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Ben is constantly reminded of his recent ex-girlfriend by seeing all these girls flashing. He decides that he can’t take the drinking and boobs (maybe he’s gay?) anymore, so he heads off on his own to take a haunted swamp tour. Marcus doesn’t want to leave him alone and begrudgingly tags along. They end up at a voodoo shop where they encounter other haunted tour participants. One such participant, Marybeth (Tamara Feldman) is quiet and distant from the rest of the group. Wait, I feel like I don’t really have to talk about the movie anymore, you’ve already it seen it. Remember that movie where a bunch of groups of strangers, with at least one black dude, get stranded in a remote area only to stumble upon a crazed killer. Someone gets killed immediately (only in this case it’s not the black guy), then someone tells the background story of the crazed killer; which is supposed to explain why he is trying to kill random people he’s never seen before. Then the remaining characters get killed off leaving a couple that fall in love through their bond of surviving the massacre. Remember that one? Me too, and that’s also the plot of Hatchet.
It definitely gets an A for effort in creating a new monster rather than simply remaking another earlier movie. The back story for Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder) and why he is now a deranged killer wasn’t very solid. If anything I found it to be humorous more than anything. His appearance can best be described as the elephant man on steroids. I found this to be more funny than scary. It’s a shame because Hodder has a ton of mainstream experience, specifically as a serial killer/monster. Talk about type casting the official title of his biography is “Kill! The True Story of the World’s Most Prolific, Cinematic Killer.” So to me he could have been put to better use. He did a great job as 
Crowley but since the character wasn’t strong he could only do so much. Quick side note, he has also appeared in Frozen and Hatchet II so he clearly likes working with Green. I think the newer Rob Zombie remakes of the Halloween franchise are an infinitely better example of the old school American horror genre in my opinion. Green does make up for the lack of darkness and back story present in this genre in other ways.
He brings his own brand of ridiculousness to spice up the aforementioned age old tale. This comes in the form of the ways in which the characters are killed and the ending. For example, to kill one of the characters he simply puts a foot on their back and tears their arms right off of their body. Unlike some other horror movies where the characters are basically equal or outnumbered here, there’s about a 10 to 1 ratio, which is the best I’ve seen in years in these types of movies. Yet, they can’t get their act together (did I mention they have a pistol) and end up getting slaughtered. The ending might be one of the best parts of the movie even if it was pretty predictable to me. It definitely is a better ending than other movies of the same genre.
I bet your thinking I hate Adam Green and his movies, especially if you’ve read my Frozen review, but alas you are wrong. This movie was actually a lot better than Frozen in my opinion. Granted they are different genres but still I think they are comparable. This movie achieves what it set out to do in its tag line. Despite whether or not I think that it was important to make another one of these types of movies, especially one overly stereotypical is for another time. As I said he does add his own twist to the genre that makes it entertaining. Thankfully this time it’s not entertaining in the sense that the entire movie is based around utterly ridiculous occurrences and the characters stupidity.
Rating: Worth checking out if you don’t know what “Old School American Horror” means and are too afraid to watch the better darker representations of this genre. (5/10)
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