Movies: Hatchet
"Hatchet" advertises itself as "Old-School American Horror." To a certain degree, it is. As you can guess by the title, it's a slasher flick. Set in the swamp outside New Orleans, the featured villain is one Victor Crowley, undead-deformed-mutated-pissed-off redneck from Hell. A group of people go on a swamp tour at night, run afoul of Victor, and the blood starts to flow. And spray. And gork. And spew.
The positives: Very humorous. Fun writing. The characters are actually individuals, not just cannon-fodder. The little baby director, Adam Green, chose to go with all latex-and-squirty-hose effects. No CG. That was very refreshing. Some entertaining and creative deaths. Lots of startling moments, and a fun, up-yours ending. Some fun cameos by Robert Englund and Tony Todd. It was cool to see a little bit of post-Katrina French Quarter. For some reason, seeing the "Marie Laveau's Voodoo Museum" sign made me very happy.
The negatives: The gore is a little TOO silly. It seems to be sprayed around with a firehose. Sure, it worked for Dead Alive, but for some reason, Hatchet doesn't achieve the correct balance of splat. It's just goofy. For instance, one character gets his arms ripped off by the bad guy. Do you know HOW HARD it is to rip somebody's arm off? Even if you're a hugely strong undead redneck, there's gonna be some twisting, wrenching, and crunching. Anybody who's ever cut up a chicken for dinner knows that joints don't give up easily. These arms just kinda popped off, with very little effort. There weren't even any bone ends showing! I mean, honestly. For shame. The bad guy, Victor, is your standard undead psycho killer. In fact, he looks a bit too much like the unmasked Jason Voorhees. HMM I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Kane Hodder played them both...nah.
Overall, I enjoyed Hatchet. It was very silly, but I was in the mood for silly. It would be an awesome movie to watch with a roomful of drunken horror fans. I hope to see more from Adam Green.