“Remember: At the end of the day we’re not curing cancer, we’re just making life more entertaining before we get cancer,” so says writer/director Adam Green. Yet, with his sophomore effort, Hatchet, and its devastating new face of terror, Victor Crowley, a lot of cancer is being cured, and very quickly at that. Granted, in the process, those harboring the illness are dying bloody, bloody deaths but, alas, nary one cancer cell can be found thriving after the fact.
Hatchet’s tagline reads, “It’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel, and it’s not based on a Japanese one. Old school American horror.” Irrefutably, this sets–not only the parameters–but the tone for Green’s loving homage to the heyday of throwaway horror while simultaneously mocking it in all its absurd, redundant, predictable glory. By the final frame, regardless of one’s final verdict upon the prowess and worth of the feature, no one–and I mean no one–will have legitimate grounds for saying they were bored.
This isn’t to say that Hatchet is a masterwork. Indeed, its pithy, tongue-in-cheek dialogue misses on occasion yet, in much the same vein as a Troma production, it is sometimes hard to determine if the culpability lies in misdirection or, instead, is the result of excruciatingly executed satirical intent. Moreover, the trademark of 1980s American horror is predictability. From the obvious vestal souls whom, upon their first appearance, will undoubtedly live to see another day; to the rote dialogue; the trite locales which all but conveniently force entrapment; all the way down to the Freudian structure, Puritan Code of Ethics, and Shakespearian Fool–the combination of which can be used as an unnecessary guidebook to the mundane progression of the plot, Hatchet dutifully plays by the numbers. However, instead of being a yawn-inducing cut-out of yesteryear, i.e Rob Schmidt’s Wrong Turn, it jibes the mundane facets of its forerunners, making it a wry, fun romp through what is the equivalent to one’s childhood stomping grounds.
No slasher salute would be complete without a wink-and-a-nod via cameos by some of the Terror Era’s most beloved faces: Kane Hodder, Robert Englund, Tony Todd Mercedes McNab, and Joshua Leonard pop in and out of the proceedings as the former does what many believed to be the impossible–he almost evokes tears by way of a dual role yet, don’t dare be fooled, one-half of the doppelganger is Victor Crowley, a flashy rookie on the horror monster set. It is through Crowley that Green has the most fun with his feature in the form of over-the-top, extreme EXTREME bloodletting as one creative, very red death sequence follows the next crimson-laden scene, all thanks to special effects veteran John Carl Buechler, the man responsible for the gore behind various productions of Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghoulies, Halloween, Re-Animator, and Demonic Toys. Yet, for the connoisseur of the genre, this is second only to the homages made throughout as reference is made to such classics as Meriam Cooper’s King Kong, John Carpenter’s The Thing, George Romero’s Day of the Dead, and, last–but not least–several applauds to Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th and its multiple incarnations, the most memorable of which is a sardonic incarnation of the climax of the 1980 masterpiece while recasting the pivotal moment in a postmodern light.
Adam Green’s Hatchet is a labor of love which, even if fails to make the viewer return the gesture in full, nevertheless severs itself from its peers by providing its audience with a dependable, consistent effort throughout. As the feature takes genre convention literally while concurrently embracing it by ribbing it ever to good-naturedly, the result is a fun outing which, even if does not succeed in fashioning a new face of horror with its central icon, Victor Crowley, it nonetheless protects us from what could have easily been a much lesser adversary.
Trivia tidbit: Hatchet was the last film to be shot in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina struck the city.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
