Hatchet

 

These days horror movies seem to be almost exclusively serious business. They’re about allegories and tension and suspense and atmosphere, which are all fine and dandy, and often lead to expertly creepy and disturbing gems, but it also means most are overly grim and serious. The dumb, simple fun of the past, where mask-clad serial killers slaughter nude teens ridiculously gorily and that’s it, is largely gone and mostly relegated to low budget indie fare that doesn’t review well. I guess that was the way back in the seventies, eighties and nineties as well, but at least back then there was a lot more of it. While I do appreciate the more serious, genuinely creepy and frightening horror genre, the movies I go back to and love the most are the dumb, gory fun ones.

Hatchet fills my itch for something dumb, gory and fun. It feels weird saying that, since Hatchet actually released ten years ago in 2006, and in the decade since has spawned two sequels. But in the time since then there really hasn’t been much like it. It’s a gory, late 80s/early 90s style slasher film that recognises what makes those films fun. It’s not meta or self-aware, it doesn’t try to reinvent or disassemble tropes or conventions and it never pretends to be above its own genre. Hatchet is an earnest slasher flick boasting ridiculous gore, a horrendous mountain man killer and humour to have fun with its ridiculous characters. It warmly embraces the slasher genre, knowing the silly conventions and gleefully throwing its characters into it all the same. It’s got its faults, and I’m sure a lot of what I consider positives will be considered negatives for a lot of other people, but I really enjoyed it.

It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which means drunk, wasted partygoers have flocked to the streets. Tired of all the drinking and topless girls, recently dumped Ben convinces his best friend Marcus to give up the boobs and booze for a while and go with him on a late night ‘haunted swamp tour’. Despite the seedy, amateurish nature of the boat tour operation, and the various warnings from creepy locals not to go into the swamp at night, Ben, Marcus and a ragtag group of tour-goers, including an amateur porno director, two bickering ‘actresses’, a wholesome older married couple and Marybeth, a standoffish local girl, head off into the swamp, led by hopeless but enthusiastic tour guide Shaun. The tour itself is a bust when the clueless Shaun ends up getting them lost and sinking the boat, leaving them stranded in the swamp. But it’s no ordinary swamp, as local girl Marybeth reveals - it’s the swamp of the dreaded Victor Crowley.

A bayou legend, Victor was born a horribly disfigured child kept hidden away by his father who looked after him in a shack in the swamp. One day local teenagers set fire to the shack, trapping Victor inside. In an effort to break into the house and rescue his son, Victor’s father accidentally struck him in the face with a hatchet, killing him. Decades have passed, but the legend has it that Victor’s vengeful spirit remains in the swamp, searching for his father and bringing death to anybody that comes in his way. Since then, people have gone missing in the swamp for years, including Marybeth’s gator-hunting father and brother, whom she is searching for. It isn’t long before the hapless group come across Victor’s cabin and find themselves on the run from the massive monster man.

 

The cast is made up of people you’ll vaguely recognise from various B-grade movies and TV shows, but I don’t mean this in wholly negative way. They’re all cast perfectly, fitting expertly into their silly roles and giving it their all. Nobody is slumming it here and the acting, as over the top as it tends to be in some cases, fits the comedic vibe well. The only potential low point by necessity is Marybeth, the only character played straight and without humour. She’s there to be the competent one, to act as an exposition dump and fill the ‘final girl’ role. Of the rest, Ben is perhaps the most recognisable, being played by Joel David Moore, the lanky nerd from Dodgeball and Avatar – he’s great here. Outside of the main cast, there are a couple of cool little cameos. Robert Englund (Freddy Kreuger) and Tony Todd (Candyman) show up in little scenes, while Kane Hodder (the iconic version of Jason Voorhees) plays both Victor Crowley and Victor’s father. He does a great job in both roles, especially as the monstrous Victor. He’s under a lot of heavy make-up, but the sheer bulk of the guy and his frantic, feral body language.

Victor Crowley himself is a fun character of the old style slasher movies. Big, ugly, super strong and seemingly unstoppable, Victor is exactly the sort of freaky monster man that makes this sort of movie. He’s got a great appearance as well, the malformed, inhuman face, bulbous head and general thickness. The fact that he’s dressed in hillbilly clothes (he’s got freaking overalls on) elevates the silliness. The backstory is pretty decent for a horror villain, and being placed in a New Orleans swampland bayou gives things a slightly different flavour all around. I just really like the idea that Crowley instantly flips out and kills anything he comes across in some sort of crazed, animalistic fury for no discernible reason. A lot of horror movies like to try and make their villain iconic or memorable, or tag them as the ‘next’ something something, but I have to say I just really dig Victor Crowley’s gruesome simplicity. The look, the violence, the backstory all work for me.

The film never takes itself seriously, fully acknowledging how ridiculous the premise itself is and just has fun with it. The gore is fun and explosive, with ridiculous, creative kills. The opening kill sets the tone, as a hapless schlub suffers a mini montage of dismemberment from Victor, ending with his spinal column being torn out. The other deaths are just as brutal as Victor comes at his victims with a variety of deadly tools, the titular hatchet and, often even more brutal, his own fists. We have belt sanders hitting faces, bodies being impaled on poles, heads being twisted around and other gruesome, gory and funny stuff. I think the best kill might be to the poor, nice older married lady who has her head ripped in half horizontally, leaving her tongue flapping wildly. The gore effects are all practical awesomeness, the sort of gooey, fleshy nonsense with geysers of fake blood that makes the gore fun.

After the gory opening, it takes about forty minutes of set-up before the cast are on the run from Victor, but I enjoyed it. I don’t know why, but compared to a lot of other films I just had fun with the characters and the writing, and the change from the boozy streets of New Orleans Mardi Gras to the swamp at night gives a bit of a different atmosphere, but the film’s overall aesthetic is more in line with cheesy B horror, with creepy mist and eerie haunted house lighting. It’s almost got the feel of a particularly goofy, gory Scooby Doo episode. It has a lot of that feel, barring the somewhat jarring heavy metal music that runs over the opening and ending credits. The movie was directed by relative unknown (and still pretty much unknown outside of horror circles) Adam Green, who has made a variety of other horror movies in the time since then. As far as I can tell it was his debut feature film, and it‘s pretty impressively done.

 

The film’s ending sadly sucks though, more in execution than conception. It suddenly cuts to black mid-action during a final scare and the credits run, a sudden, jerky transition that initially had me thinking my DVD had screwed up. I understand the idea behind the ending and conceptually I actually like it, but the execution is so abrupt and flavourless it took me a while to process it. I think the fact that the sound cuts out and it turns black for a few seconds before the credits run is what makes it difficult – it’d work far better if it ended on a freeze frame with the sound still running and then having the credits start running immediately. Still the journey there is a lot of fun.

When I’m in the mood for a fun little time, Hatchet is one of my go-to movies. It’s simple, gory fun that delivers on the violence and is fun and silly enough to keep it light and entertaining throughout. It’s something of a rough gem, and a good little time if you’re in the mood for a nonsense slasher movie.