Though I'll admit that I haven't seen as many of them as I'd like to, I'm still a sucker for '80s slasher movies. I don't know what it is about them that I enjoy so much, but I can't help but sit down and watch them when I get the chance.
That's largely what drew me to Adam Green's Hatchet a few years ago. The movie was hyped by practically every horror news website there is as the second coming of the '80s slasher style, that it was a movie that could quite possibly be a game-changer for the entire horror genre. But that's all it was: hype. Hatchet, in truth, sucks. It was overblown, gratuitous, and was trying way too hard to replicate what came naturally for the movies Green wanted it to be like. It felt more like an unfunny parody than anything else.
But I guess Hatchet was successful, because Green got to make a sequel. I didn't and still don't see the need for Hatchet II, but hey, there it is. I will admit that I thought that it was a brave release, spending one weekend in sixty-eight AMC theaters without a rating from the MPAA. It didn't play anywhere within 100 miles of me, but I don't know if I'd have seen it anyway because of my feelings for the first one. But recently I figured what the heck, might as well at least rent the DVD and give it a shot. And I'm actually glad I did, because Hatchet II was nowhere near as bad as I'd initially feared.
The movie picks up immediately where the first Hatchet ended, with Marybeth (Danielle Harris) in the grip of homicidal monster Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder). She barely manages to escape and limps back to civilization, where she is quick to hunt down "Reverend Zombie" (Tony Todd), the fake voodoo priest who organized the boat tour that took her into Crowley's territory in the first place.
Marybeth tells Reverend Zombie about how everyone on the tour was massacred by Crowley, but all she wants is to reclaim the bodies of her father and brother (who Crowley killed in the first movie's prologue) and give them a proper burial rather than let them rot in some madman's shack in the swamp. Having figured out a way to seemingly kill Crowley for good, Reverend Zombie agrees to help Marybeth and assembles a lynch mob to back them up.
Considering how much I disliked the first Hatchet, I wasn't expecting a whole heck of a lot from the sequel. But Hatchet II is surprisingly entertaining. It's a flawed movie, of course, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The movie is a fun ride that, while risking becoming as unbearably gratuitous as its predecessor, actually does come close to matching the atmosphere of the '80s slasher flicks its creator intended for it to pay tribute to.
Adam Green returns to the world of Victor Crowley as the sequel's writer and director, and his efforts are a big improvement over his work with the first Hatchet. I really didn't like what he did with the first movie, but one could argue that it was due to his relative inexperience at the time. But as far as Hatchet II's direction goes, Green does a fine job. It's more polished and slick than the majority of those old-school slasher flicks and the kills are gratuitous to the point of being comedic, but Green manages to make Hatchet II feel very much like a modern blast from the past. Or at the very least, it comes a lot closer to that than the first Hatchet did.
I felt Green's script was inconsistent, however. He nails the all the character archetypes, but it doesn't seem to know if he wants to make a legitimate slasher movie or a parody of them. He gets bits and pieces of the time-tested formula right, but he spends way too much effort in trying to cram the movie full of the different comedic elements. For example, the redneck lynch mob argues over cookies and about how "Chad" is a really douchebaggy name. This takes up at least ten total minutes of screen time. Very little of the intended humor is actually funny, and like I said earlier, the various kills Green has dreamed up reach a point where they become more silly than anything else.
If the movie was supposed to be a satire of the genre's conventions like the Scream franchise or Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, then Green didn't really do that great a job. And if the movie was meant to be a serious slasher movie, then Green did even worse. You'd think for a guy who wanted to create the next great horror icon, Green would at least attempt to work in some horror among all the terrible comedy.
At least his cast doesn't let the script bog them down. In the role of Hatchet II's resident "final girl" is Danielle Harris, who longtime horror devotees will recognize from her appearances in four of the Halloween movies. She steps into the role Tamara Feldman played in the first movie and immediately improves upon Feldman's terrible performance. Harris's Southern accent isn't completely convincing, but she is still very likable, engaging, and sympathetic. I really enjoyed Harris in the role, and it makes me wish she'd been hired to appear in the first Hatchet too.
I also really liked Tony Todd, whose role gets beefed up from the cameo he had in the first movie. You can always count on Todd to be great no matter what movie he's in or what character he's playing, and this proves to be no exception. He's suitably creepy in the role, playing it with so much conviction that he practically runs away with the movie.
But it isn't hard to enjoy his performance, when most of the cost beyond he and Harris are awful. The worst is Tom Holland, the director of Child's Play and the 1985 version of Fright Night. You can tell he has more experience behind the camera than in front of it, because his acting is awful. I often pick on some actors for being wooden, but Holland is the first actor I've seen who'd be in danger if termites got loose on the set. The guy is obviously not an actor, and I'm pretty sure the only reason he was brought into the movie at all so the cast could have one more big name from the horror genre.
And I guess I should at least make a passing mention to Kane Hodder, who returns to the role he originated in the first movie. It makes sense to have him play the killer, since if you're gonna make a movie with a wannabe Jason, you might as well have the guy who played Jason four times. There really isn't a lot required of Hodder outside of acting like a monster and killing people, and he does it like a champ. I said in my critique of the first movie that it felt like he was autopilot, but he does show a bit more effort here. But really, any faults would probably be due more to how Green treats the character than how Hodder plays him.
I know I've spent the bulk of this review ragging on the movie's various flaws, but Hatchet II isn't that bad a movie. It doesn't live up to any of the hype or marketing invested in it, I must say that. But the movie can totally work as a fun little flick to watch on Halloween. And even at its worst, it's still an improvement over the first movie. I hear they're prepping Hatchet III right now, so let's hope it continues that trend.
Final Rating: ***
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