HATCHET Movie Review

HATCHET (2006)

The legend of Victor Crowley has haunted the Louisiana bayou on the outskirts of New Orleans ever since the young and deformed Victor was accidentally murdered by his father, as he tried to save him during a fire. Now, they say that the ghost of Victor roams the area of his abandoned home, and murders anyone who gets too close. But Ben, along with his buddy Marcus, have no idea of this curse as they take a night time boat ride through the swamp via a voodoo shop tourist trap. Along with a loving married couple, a sleazy director and his two bimbo actresses who flash their breast on command, and a young woman who does not appear to be on the tour for fun, they are about to discover that there is truth behind every legend. And sometimes truth hurts. A lot.

From the very get go of writer and director Adam Green's horror project, it was hyped as a return to old school horror, and a return to championing the slasher antagonist. Green went so far as to get Robert Englund and Tony Todd in cameo performances, and the monstrously burly Kane Hodder to step into the shoes of Victor. Did he succeed? Well, if your idea of "old school" horror is ripping off the countless low-budget slasher clones that permeated drive-ins and video stores in the 80's that were already ripping off FRIDAY THE 13th, then yes, yes he did. Almost.

Green major problem with HATCHET is that he is purposely trying to make a film that creates shallow characters that you want to see die, setting up gratuitous nudity with a wink to the camera, and trying to create a new slasher anti-hero that will automatically be embraced by the fans. He is trying to create a film that you'd find on some dusty shelf in a mom-and-pop video store twenty years ago. But the films he is lovingly try to xerox never set out to be "bad" and never set out to obtain cult stats, it was only through the very nature of their limited budget, crew and cast and luck that they naturally became the schlock we so adore.

However, in Green's defense, there can be no denying the energy the man has for the genre, or his determination to see his vision come to the screen, however flawed it may be. This comes through the most in his dedication to using purely prosthetic and in-camera effects to achieve his visceral and brutal kills. Sadly, it takes almost fifty minutes of the roughly eight-minute running time to get there. First, the audience must wade through a knowingly corny script and annoying characters that you quickly realize are just lambs literally being driven to the slaughter. Most of the characters purposely grate against the skin, while the rest are just dull.

Once the carnage begins, Green lets loose what is obviously his key reason for making HATCHET, and that is setting up one gore-tastic murder sequence after another. Knowing beforehand there would be no MPAA to get in the way, Green goes for absolute broke as he gives each of his characters a caro syrup drenched demise that will put a smile on just about ever gorehound's face. Heads are popped off, limbed are torn asunder, and a belt-sander is put to good use on one victim's face just for starters. Victor Crowley's make-up, which looks very close to Jason Vorhees circa FRIDAY THE 13th PART 2, looks great, and his tattered clothes leave plenty of room for his deformed body to poke through. Kane Hodder, of course, dominates the screen every time he pops up. The man is in the business of being a killing machine, and business is good!

Green tries to stick to the "rules" he knows so well, and never for a second contemplates adding something or trying to put his own mark on the genre, which quickly devolves into a series of connected skits you can guess the ending of pretty early on. And with no characters to even route for, let alone care about, the whole thing becomes little more than a special effects resume reel to shop around. While it makes for an enjoyable but rather forgettable viewing (again, almost succeeding in the "old school horror" department), HATCHET should never have received the hype or praise that it did, nor does it achieve its self proclaimed moniker. It is the ultimate fan film made with professional equipment, from the story an eight-year old who has just been exposed to horror make up. No more and no less.

THE DESCENT PART 2 (2009) Movie Review

THE DESCENT: PART 2 (2009)

Rescuers have been searching for two days for the six spelunkers that never returned from a charted course into Boreham caves when Sarah, the lone survivor of the relentless attacks of the cave's blind inhabitants, is found in a completely separate area of the county. Sarah can't recall what happened during her time in the caves, nor what happened to her friends, and the local sheriff, along with members of the search team, bring Sarah back into the caves in hopes of rekindling her memory and hoping to find the rest of the missing women. What they find however, is one wave after another of the cave's crawling residents, who once again take to turning the unwelcome visitors into their next meal. Sarah, whose mind has snapped back into place, shifts right back into survival mode. But will her knowledge of her attackers be enough to save the group or are the destined never to reascend to the surface?

Picking up right after the end of the original DESCENT, the next chapter is an almost a text book example of a film that suffers from sequelitis with more guts and gore, more chases, and more jump scares at the expense of less character development and a less engaging story. Director Jon Harris does an excellent job of imitating the style and pace of Neil Marshall, who has reduced himself to executive producer for this entry. Harris plays with the claustrophobic elements of the caves and frantic desperation of the first film almost pitch perfect, as he pours one scene after the next on the viewers trying to bigger and better with every turn of the corner.

Shauna MacDonald, who returns to her role as Sarah, also does a pretty good imitation of her character from the first time around. There is not enough time given to recapture that emotional connection that was established in the first, but it is still quite enjoyable watching her dispatching one crawler after the next with whatever is handy at the moment. The rest of the characters are even less worthy of becoming emotionally attached to, and therein lies the main problem with the sequel. Now that you know what is in the caves, the entire cast can be seen as little more than a buffet being marched into the darkness, rather than characters to connect and feel for.

But with the loss of character investment comes the acquisition of far more gruesome kills and attacks than the first one. There seems to be a never-ending horde of crawlers in the sequel, and for every one that is killed via spikes, drills, bare hands and hair pins with copious amounts of blood pouring everywhere, two more appear from the cave's recesses to take their place. The crawler's attacks have also increased in voracity, whether it is tearing out great chunk's of their victim's necks or clawing through them, with equal amounts of spewing blood.

With several visits to set pieces and the leftover carnage of the original, repeating motifs and shots laid out in the original, and return visits from the original's cast in one form or another, this movie definitely earns its "PART 2" in spades. However, there is still just enough originality sprinkled into this competently made sequel to make this venture worth taking.

SAW VII Details including Plot Synopsis Cary Elwes Casting

The SAW VII Synopsis is out:

"As a deadly battle rages over Jigsaw’s brutal legacy, a group of Jigsaw survivors gathers to seek the support of self-help guru and fellow survivor Bobby Dagen, a man whose own dark secrets unleash a new wave of terror… The first theatrical feature to be shot exclusively on the cutting-edge SI-3D digital camera system, SAW VII 3-D brings the horrifying games of Jigsaw to life like never before."

Casting includes Tobin Bell, Cary Elwes, Costas Mandylor and Betsy Russell, Sean Patrick Flanery (BOONDOCK SAINTS), Gina Holden (FINAL DESTINATION 3), Chad Donella (”Lost”, “X-Files”), Laurence Anthony, Dean Armstrong and Naomi Snieckus.

What may dastardly machine will our Dread Pirate Roberts face in this, what may be the final chapter of SAW?

HOME SICK Movie Review

HOME SICK (2007)

Tension and unease permeate a small get together of friends for Claire, who has returned to her Alabama hometown after spending time in California. But nothing can prepare them when a psychotic grinning salesman who calls himself Mr. Suitcase (Bill Moseley) barges into the party and demands that they each tell him someone that they hate. The freaked out friends submit to his demands, hoping to make him leave, with Tim even going so far as to say he hates everyone in the room. Satisfied, with their answers, Mr. Suitcase makes his exit.

Over the next few days, the people that Claire and her friends named start showing up brutally murdered at the hands of a black clad monstrosity whose only purpose is slaughter. Thinking that the psychotic man who visited their party has started killing their unintentionally named victims, and with the realization that their lives are in danger thanks to Tim’s answer, the friends head over to Tim’s uncle’s house to load up on guns. But first, drinks at the local watering hole and few lines of coke.

Indie film director Adam Wingard and collaborative writer E.L. Katz, who have been prolific short film creators over the past several years make a shocking feature length debut with HOME SICK that owes much of its success to its unrelenting gore effects and a few noteworthy names to market amongst their mainly unknown cast. Wingard backs up the bait with an inherit ability to make the obviously low budget film look great and is coupled with Katz’s bizarre over-the-top script that leaves much of the film’s plot a deliberately unanswered mystery. Together, this pair has concocted a cinema puree that is destined to rank highly among horror fans searching for a new addition to their top ten.

Amongst the cast names that horror fans will instantly recognize is Bill Moseley, who has been a force to be reckoned with from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 to THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. Although his appearance here as Mr. Suitcase is brief, his performance is definitely a highlight of the movie and his unnerving interaction sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Tiffany Shepis, an insanely busy direct-to-video scream queen who got her start at Troma. As Candice, she provides a set of healthy breasts to oogle and gleefully covers herself in blood. Finally, Tom Towles, also of THE DEVIL'S REJECTS fame, gives a ludicrous performance as a crazed gun-toting chili-cooking redneck. This trio helps to set aside this movie from the rest of the gore-drenched low budget schlock that filmmaker hopefuls parade around as they try to capture the fickle horror enthusiast’s attention.

But it is Jonathan Thornton, along with his special effects company Disturbing Images, that truly deserves a round of applause for giving Home Sick the staying power that will inevitably win over the deadened hearts of extreme cinema seekers. Thornton’s purely practical effects gives the viewers a reason to cheer for the continued use of prosthetics and make-up, with gory splatter that ranges from the viciously surreal to the painfully all-too-real. Thornton, whose work is obviously inspired by the likes of Lucio Fulci and Herschell Gordon Lewis, is right on par with well-known contemporaries like those at Toe Tag Pictures. From the opening kill involving a knife through the head, to fingernails being torn off one by one, to a fist punch through someone’s skull, Thornton keeps the squirms high and the body count even higher.

But all is not perfect for this grisly shocker looking to make a name for itself. Wingard, who has an eye for cinematography and uses plenty of filters to hide the film’s 16mm origins, has trouble hiding the limitations of budget, locations and principle actors. Often times, one or two shots in a scene will betray what has otherwise been a great sequence, but it is just enough to pull you out of the moment. Similarly, Katz’s script often calls for colorful comedy and bits of banter that may look good on paper but do not come across as they should. Thankfully however, the duo’s professionalism does keep these momentary glitches to a minimum.

Now, after making the rounds of film festivals and horror conventions over the past year, Wingard and Katz have finally unleashed their Alabama trailer trash bloodbath on DVD with the help of the film’s executive producers over at Synapse Films. Home Sick may have a very limited audience, due to the outrageously graphic violence, but those that dare to dwell within these ninety minutes will most likely find the gruesome meal they’ve been hungering for.

Home Sick Movie and DVD Review originally published at The DVD Lounge.