Sorry about missing out on my "Weekly" features, but I've been relatively busy/lazy. Anyway, I picked this week's film based on discussing it briefly last night and realizing some very hardcore genre fans hadn't seen it yet. And no, it's not based on a kids book.
I'm certain I've talked about Hatchet on this site before. For a while, I was making everyone I knew watch the film. I've probably seen it myself more than any other film since 2007 because of this and it never gets old. A big reason for this is Hatchet has amazing practical gore effects. The reactions it gets in a room full of people cannot be matched generally because people don't know exactly what to expect (well... until the first scene at least). There is nothing cheesy about the effects either. How they achieved what they did on such a low budget is pretty astounding.
Hatchet is a throwback to 80s slasher movies. A group of people are alone and lost in a Louisiana swamp and a massive killer is after them. It's been seen a million times before. What sets Hatchet apart (aside from the amazing effects) is the characters. Most of them are incredibly likable, even if they're a bit sleazy, and all are entertaining. Best of all, they can all act (well, there may be one exception). Joel David Moore has been in a ton of TV shows and was in Avatar so everyone on the planet can pretty much recognize him. Deon Richmond is a name no one has any reason to know, but when you find out where you recognize him from...
...you'll be happy to discover he's still hilarious. Moore and Richmond have great chemistry and I found that their friendship was much like a lot of mine, especially in the way they talk. There are many other recognizable faces, if not names: Robert Englund, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Joel Murray (Bill's brother), Joshua Leonard, Richard Riehle, and Partika Darbo (and an amazing tidbit I just learned: Mercedes McNab is the Girl Scout selling cookies in The Addams Family!).
Something that the above trailer doesn't even try to get across, which is surprising given the work of much of the cast, is how freaking funny the movie is. I tend to like my horror with a sense of humor, so this is perfect for me. Even in the tensest of situations, writer/director Adam Green takes time out for a funny line or situation. This helps to lighten the mood to where the audience lets their guard down and can really be surprised. (In addition to the normal funny, there is a great joke about how a character didn't actually go to NYU, but to Hofstra. Maybe it's not great to you, but my old roommate and I had just seen a douche from Hofstra give an "inspirational" speech as part of a student award his brother won at BU and it was nice to see is institution taken down a notch [the only other time I've heard Hofstra mentioned was in Bill Cosby's stand-up act]).
Unfortunately, Green's other films, Spiral and Frozen, haven't lived up to his first feature, though they both have their moments (Spiral was film in Portland, incidentally, though Frozen is the better picture [those are unrelated thoughts in the same parenthetical. In no way to I believe that because a film is shot in Portland that it should therefore be the better film]), but Hatchet is just filled with unbridled joy, even if it is about innocent people being massacred by some mutant reincarnate. I've yet to see Hatchet 2, but am looking forward to it. Hopefully Green will catch the same magic.
As a final note, Hatchet was the last film to shoot in a pre-Katrina New Orleans.
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