Movie Review: Hatchet III (2013)

 

The Hatchet films are awesome. I can nitpick about small problems here and there, but the absolute truth is that I have adored all of the movies, if only for the unrelenting, amazing gore and nothing else. The goal of each Hatchet film is to take any kind of sharp instrument, show as much of the inside of the human body as possible, drench it in blood, and call it a day. And by goodness, do they ever succeed.

Again picking up exactly where the last film ended, Marybeth has supposedly ended Victor Crowley's reign of terror in the swamp when she leaves him a bloody, dismembered mess. She turns herself into the police, who go to Honey Island Swamp to clean up Victor's massacre. But they turn out to be just more victims for the unstoppable killer who is of course not dead, and will not be until the sheriff's wife convinces Marybeth to help her put a stop to him once and for all.

I gave Hatchet II a bit of unfair criticism for taking itself and the story too seriously (doesn't mean the movie still wasn't AWESOME), but I have absolutely no criticisms about Hatchet III. It is nothing more than an insane gore-fest, packing as much craziness, brains and intestines it can in the movie's short 80-minute run time. It's short and sweet in the best way possible, and the fun cast of characters - and the actors who play them - are obviously enjoying themselves just as much as the audience.

Scream queen Danielle Harris returns as Marybeth, but she is surprisingly not really the star of the film. She spends most of her screen time uncooperative and pissed off - which I guess is understandable for anybody who had been through what her character went through. There are a couple of different groups of people that the film follows, and it's weird because that makes harder to guess who is going to live and who is going to die. Parry Shen, the token Asian, returns as a completely different character again - not related to the swamp boat brothers, though. The real scene stealers are Zach Galligan as Sheriff Fowler and Caroline Williams as Amanda, his ex-wife and Victor Crowley legend expert. Galligan is absolutely hilarious with his bayou accent and I loved seeing him in a movie like this. Williams provides much of the subtle comic relief as she constantly argues with the deputy and Marybeth, and when she is trying to win over Thomas Crowley's nephew, played by Sid Haig, and convincing him to give them his uncle's ashes. One of the coolest things is seeing Derek Mears's SWAT leader Hawes square off with Kane Hodder's Victor - two Jasons coming face to face, love it!

The gore gets off to fantastic start. We see Marybeth again blowing off Victor's head with a shotgun, but he comes back, grabs her, and she punches her whole arm into his pulpy face. Gross. The scene ends with Victor falling on an active chainsaw that cuts his body in half height-wise, spraying a delicious amount of blood all over poor Danielle Harris. Plenty more inventive kills follow. Normally I would love to describe them all here, but one of my favorite things about the Hatchet films is the anticipation of the crazy kills. I'll leave the surprises for you to experience on your own.

Being so over-the-top and unbelievable, director and writer Adam Green - who sadly did not direct the third installment, but was still very much involved with the film - has created a series and a killer that is a real love letter to the best and most extreme the genre can be. I'm seriously lovin' it.

Afterthought: The ending got the gears in my  head turning about where the series might go - Marybeth dies, the screen goes black, then comes back up on her again taking one last breath. Most would say that means she lived but I'm hoping that's her coming back as sort of the new Victor Crowley, a ghost and a repeater. Victor couldn't be stopped until he was reunited with his dad, so maybe the same is true for Marybeth - she never found the bodies of her father and brother. Unless I'm remembering things terribly wrong and therefore this whole idea is moot...

Yes, I did remember things terribly wrong. It had been a while since I saw the first Hatchet film. Marybeth definitely found her father and brother's bodies.

Movie Review: Hatchet 2 (2010)

Before talking about Hatchet 2, let's go back to 2006. The first Hatchet film was a blast. It did what all the advertisements said it would do and brought back the old school slasher awesomeness of days gone by. It was hilariously funny and campy, with tons of over-the-top gore and effects that made it an amazingly fun time to watch.

So here comes the "however." Hatchet 2 just didn't do it enough for me. It was surprisingly and sadly not as fun to watch as the first one, which had me laughing at the ridiculous characters and their lines just as much as the crazy gore. The sequel never even got a chuckle out of me. The shift in tone works for the story, though, and it was a great way to distinguish itself from the first film - I just can't help missing the tone from the first movie, I'm sorry!

Taking off from the very last frame of Hatchet, this sequel has our final girl Marybeth (now played by the always wonderful Danielle Harris) being rescued from the hideous Victor Crowley by another swamp-dwelling loner named Jack Cracker. However, Jack soon throws her out when he finds out who she is and sends her to Reverend Zombie to learn the truth about herself and the curse of Victor Crowley. Marybeth and Zombie then head back into the swamp with a team of hunters to finally take Crowley out.

The cast for this film is nothing short of a horror movie lover's absolute wet dream. Danielle Harris, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Tom Holland... I'm thoroughly impressed. Tony Todd is pretty much a guarantee for me to watch any film, even if it's just him standing there reading from the Joy of Cooking or something.

The big thing the Hatchet films are known for is of course the excessive gore and Hatchet 2 is certainly no disappointment in that area. The first kill is most indicative of what's to come, albeit completely unbelievable. Victor pulls out Jack Cracker's intestines with his bare hands, then strangles him with them, then somehow manages to lop his head clean off with them. It's not like he was using piano wire or some other such shit, it was freaking intestines and intestines cannot cut off someone's head. But of course it was still amazingly fun, so I honestly don't really care.

The body count is upped from the first film with lots of new, clever and gruesome ways for people to die. Highlights include: head bashing with a hatchet; a sander to the back of the head; double chainsaw crotch-to-head slicing; a brutal jaw rip; and the biggest highlight of all, Tony Todd's demise. He gets chopped in half and then gets flayed when Victor pulls his body out of his skin by his protruding spine. Whoa. I fear for Adam Green sometimes. He's getting a little too good at coming up with this kind of stuff. Not really - he needs to keep coming up with this kind of stuff because it is AWESOME.

One thing I liked about the plot was the extended backstory given about Victor. The original story presented was okay, but didn't explain how Victor could be this vengeful ghost in the swamp. In fact, I always just assumed that he didn't really die when his father hit him with the hatchet and sort of hid out for years like Jason did. Now though, we learn that Victor was cursed in utero by his father's, Thomas Crowley, wife because Thomas was having an affair with his wife's nurse while she was dying of cancer. He was born a monster and really is an innocent, having to pay for the sins of his father, literally. So now we feel even more sorry for him now like we do with Leatherface and Jason. Poor deformed little boys.

Hatchet 2 isn't true movie length, which is disappointing because I wanted more. It clocks in at about 82 minutes - too short! Sure we all knew where the basic story was going when it started - more people go into the swamp, more people get killed, Victor Crowley gets killed - so I guess you don't really need that much time to tell that story, but can you blame me for wanting more Hatchet? The sequel is still a great movie, though. Loved the gore (very, very well done), loved the actors and their performances, and loved that Kane Hodder also gave a terrific performance, and looked dead sexy... as Thomas Crowley, of course, not Victor.

Back to my comment about Tony Todd reading from a cookbook... that would be kind of awesome. Just picture that beast of a man standing on a spooking soundstage and using that amazing voice to say things like, "Beat two eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add flour, sugar, and paprika. Stir well." Ohhhh, I'm weak in the knees. Todd especially could make that sound incredibly sexy and/or scary.

Movie Review: Frozen (2010)

So I saw a couple of weeks ago that a ton of people reviewed Frozen and gave it fair comments. Figured I should check it out for meself. And me liked it.

Three friends - Parker (Emma Bell), Lynch (Shawn Ashmore), and Dan (Kevin Zegers) - are on a skiing trip together in New England. Wanting to go out for one last run after night falls, they convince the chairlift operator to let them up even as they are closing. But the lift shuts down before the friends get off and they are left stranded in the chair 50 feet above ground. The resort will be deserted for the next five days. How will they survive?

Surprisingly, I didn't have much doubt that this film would be good. Impressive work by writer and director Adam Green with his previous film Hatchet (and Grace sort of because he was producer) plus the wildness of the plot was enough to convince me that Frozen could be one hell of an interesting ride. And I think I was right.

I was skeptical about the plot. Trapped in a ski lift? Big whoop, right? But then you gotta think about the freezing temps; the elevation of the mountain and your elevation above the ground which makes jumping a danger; and the fact that the cables on these lifts are razor sharp, making it not as easy to just shimmy across to the nearest pole and climb down. Plus Green adds in a pack of bloodthirsty wolves on the ground to add to the kids' dire situation. So in that sense, he covered his bases well in making us believe that there weren't that many options for these three to get away as easily as one would think.

Two essential things I think are necessary for a film with a relatively thin plot such as this is characters and pacing, and Green hits the mark with both of these. The characters at first seem like rather typical college friends, but I think they all have a great relationship and nobody is a stereotype. The pacing is also well done, with hardly any lulls in action.

One thing that impressed me the most was the dialogue, and is what helped me like the characters. I think I was expecting a lot of whining and the kids cursing at each other blah blah blah, but there was mostly none of that. They lose their cool a few times with each other, especially Parker and Lynch, and even though they don't seem that close (as Dan's best friend and the girlfriend who seems to have stolen him away from Lynch) they manage to help each other out through the situation. There's a lot of talking about mundane things to supposedly keep their minds off what they have gotten themselves into, but what they're really saying is just how important these mundane things really are, and how you realize that when you are so close to death. I don't know about the top three breakfast cereals being that important (Raisin Bran, Honey Nut Chex, Lucky Charms) or having a dog named Steve, but Lynch getting them to talk about these things made the characters more endearing and lovable and you don't want to see anything bad happen to them. Or at least I didn't. And there was a great moment when Dan was being attacked by the wolves and he's screaming at Lynch not to let Parker look. Heartbreaking!

There was a small willy moment when Parker wakes up and her bare hand is grasping the metal safety bar. Oh shit! At first I had a funny flashback to A Christmas Story, but then realized that this was probably not so funny. So then we get a really gross shot of her pulling the skin off her hand to free herself. Ouch.

I hate to be a bitch and blame the victim or whatever, but Dan should have thought a little more carefully about that jump before going all Evel Knievel. I know it was a pressure situation and all, but it doesn't take a genius to know that jumping feet first straight down was about the dumbest thing ever to do. Should have tried curling himself into a ball or something on the way down. Then your freaking bones wouldn't be sticking out of your legs, dumbass.

Another dumb thing they do is when Lynch finally makes it across the cables to the pole, the wolves have returned and he still jumps down anyway, with only a ski pole to defend himself with! He might have tried waiting until the wolves were, oh I don't know, GONE maybe? Yeah? Even after all that talk about how wolves typically avoid people, these seem to be aggressive little buggers and end up killing both Dan and Lynch (sorry for the spoiler). Thankfully, though, when little Parker goes sliding down the hill and comes face to face with about five of them, they just leave her alone and by this point, the audience really needed something good to happen to these people.

Oh, by the way - hey you, Kane Hodder!

Yeah, you better believe I know it's you! Good to see you.

The Netflix description calls Frozen a "taut thriller" and I think that's the best way to describe it. It's an interesting turn from other horror films or thrillers out there and a nice film to launch the new A Bigger Boat production company (love the name). And it's great that Green chose to do something like this after the bloodbath that was Hatchet.