Hatchet II

I saw "Hatchet 2" last night at the Fantsay Film Fest in Frankfurt, Germany and what I saw was just WOOOOW! I loved "Hatchet"...and this sequel is much better than the first one. "Hatchet 2" is funny and very, very violent. Now I know why it should be cut from the MPAA to get an R-rating. I think it's a good idea to release movies without any rating instead of cutting something out like other studios do because they want to make more profit. In "Hatchet 2" there are many kills on screen and they are very violent, very bloody & gory. One of them might be one of the funniest and most curious kills ever - the whole audience laughed and acclaimed loudly.

I enjoyed this movie all the time and I hope to see it again - uncut again!

It started off quite different to the first; after spending some time explaining things about the killer however, things returned to campy slasher territory.

This time, Tony Todd takes hunters into the woods so the cast consists of older people mostly.

Perhaps because of watching many films commissioned by sci-fi channel I was familiar with films that featured gun-toting guys without much personality and I was surprised when the hunters had varying oddball personalities. Obviously bloody deaths occur. Basically its a film where descriptions can't substitute for watching it. It's highly entertaining though.

I really enjoyed the first HATCHET film, which perfectly captured the spirit of a 1980s-era slasher film. It was replete with funny characters and dialogue, great prosthetic effects, and a wonderfully old-fashioned atmosphere and feel. So where did it all go wrong for this sequel? Well, it appears to have been written on the fly, with a storyline that copies EXACTLY the same plot as the first film: a group visit the bayous in the middle of the night, with the twist that they're now out to hunt down and destroy the supernatural killer Victor Crowley. Hell, they even bring back Parry Shen, whose character died in the first movie (by virtue of him playing the guy's twin brother).

Everything that sparkled about the first film has gone in HATCHET II, to be replaced by a boring script and a dearth of imagination. The gore effects are more extreme but at the same time sillier and with worse effects, and somehow Kane Hodder's killer just doesn't look as frightening. He looks goofy, like an alien from a 1980s movie, whereas in the first film he was kept in the shadows a lot and all the more frightening for it.

Finally, Danielle Harris is a poor replacement for the original actress. The one good thing this has going for it is a substantial part for Tony Todd, who merely cameoed in the first movie. Todd is great, but it's not enough to lift the film to greatness. My favourite thing about this? Emma Bell's cameo, which is a lovely reference for anyone who's seen and enjoyed the director's FROZEN.

I'd say the first half of Hatchet 2 is a bit sillier and even campier than the first, but the films last half-hour really makes up for it.

THis is one seriously gory flick. It's gorier than the original, and funnier than the original. It might actually be better than the original, but it's an awfully tight race.

Adam Green still has me on the edge of my seat waiting for his next horror project. Guess I'll have to wait for the DVD release of Hatchet 3 next month - even though he didn't direct.

Hatchet 2 is a little better than the original on the acting/cast front as well. In the original we see a bunch of undeveloped boobs getting knocked-off left and right. Here, there's a little more substance to who's getting their heads ripped off.

This thing gets pretty intense down the stretch. Thumbs up.

With 80's slashers, their effect on me is actually relaxing. We have a bunch of characters who the filmmaker generally deems worthless (except a few, who make it to the end) so that we don't have to actually invest anything until their inconsequential deaths, clear, simple-minded notions of good and evil, and contrived mechanisms that explain them away (the evil presence is usually described by some kind of simplified trauma). None of this happens in real life, so none of this actually has potential to breach the divide and actually unsettle. It's a movie fantasy, one oddly espousing deeply conservative values (prudence is generally rewarded) that fly in the face of the crowd that avidly sees them.

Like the first Hatchet, this is a knowingly cartoonish version of this. The deaths are delightfully absurd. At some point the baddie in this, Vincent Crowley, shows up with a chainsaw six feet long. The film knows what part it plays in the tradition and has fun with it.

What is actually problematic about these films is that, for all the parody, they still posit themselves as straight slasher films. It doesn't work, the hackneyed plot above all where a band of mercenaries is hastily assembled to venture into the bayou. Or what they aim to do once there.

The Japanese as usual are more savvy about this kind of thing. In films like The Machine Girl, they put together all kinds of cultural stamps they have produced and obsessed over the years (video games, anime, martial arts, extreme violence, erotica) and obliterate one against the other.

Here, I assume the filmmaker doesn't have a grasp of how the pastiche can be made to work. Probably because he doesn't understand or care to anything other than this kind of film. The splatter works, what's around it not so much.