"Hatchet" review

Hatchet (2006)

Director: Adam Green
Writer: Adam Green

Joel Moore... Ben
Tamara Feldman... Marybeth
Deon Richmond... Marcus
Mercedes McNab... Misty
Kane Hodder... Victor Crowley/Mr. Crowley
Parry Shen... Shawn
Joleigh Fioreavanti... Jenna
Joel Murray... Shapiro

I saw this one at the Arclight in Hollywood. A bunch of college kids are in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. One of the guys gets bored with staring at naked breasts and wants to take a haunted swamp tour. This fool is in the right movie. Soon a gaggle of potential victims ends up in a murky swamp where a vicious killer resides. Victor Crowley despises other living things in his swamp and wants to take a hatchet to all of them.

“Hatchet” bills itself as “Old School American Horror”. I can now roughly translate that to mean: “Blood-splatter comedy”. When I first heard of this movie, I thought it would be a return to the vicious slasher flicks from the 80’s. But “Hatchet” is more interested in letting you cheer on the excessive blood spilling than in trying to scare you. There are plenty of gore scenes but they’re all done for laughs. This movie was designed for horror fans to watch with their buddies so that they can root for Crowley to hack off as many limbs as possible.

“Hatchet” is an entertaining horror flick. It’s not $11.00 at the Arclight entertaining but it’s worth a rental. There’s nothing original going on in “Hatchet” but that’s the point. It’s meant to let horror fans revel in the “old school” joys of watching a woman get her face ripped apart by a power saw and then watching another fool get hacked to death with a shovel. Ahh, the good old days. “Hatchet” is a proud B-movie which revels in its lowbrow nature. It shoots low and scores.

SCORE: 3 out of 4 hatchet hilarity