HATCHET: You No Funny but You No Bad

All images copyright © 2007 Anchor Bay

You can’t trust Petey Waco. Petey is a friend of mine who says goofy things and fortunately, he didn’t have much to say about HATCHET. Matter of fact, he quit watching it about 20 minutes in.

“For a film touting a return to old school horror,” said Petey, “it ain’t too old school.”

“Yeah, but what about the old-school gore effects?”

“They were cool.”

“The movie looks really good.”

“It does. I actually jumped at the Robert Englund part in the beginning.”

“Then what’s your fuckin’ problem, Waco?”

“Old school horror never tried to be that funny. Why does every fuckin’ horror movie today have to try and be funny?”

Petey’s got a point there. There’s WAY TOO MUCH funny business going on in modern horror.

THE HA-HAs (above)

HATCHET lives and breathes by utilizing the standard cliché of 80’s slashers having a deformed-and put-upon-psycho-with-a-legend pop up and start killing young adults and all others who get up in his way while he’s doing it. Fine, I can go with that. Matter of fact, this movie does a good job of that. There’s a lot of good shit in this movie: the camera work, the lighting, the acting, the old school prosthetic FX. It feels and looks well thought-out and shows in the execution (pardon my pun). But it does cross the line of trying to mine comedy gold in the confines of a horror film, like writer-director Adam Green thinks he’s got a handle on comedy.

Adam Green, Petey Waco sez can your comedy career and make fucking horror films. And I have to agree. Green can make a horror film but he can’t do comedy.

The two leads, Joel Moore and Deon Richmond, save the film because they’re actually likable. Had they not been likable, the dialogue coming out of their mouths would have totally sunk this movie. The two bickering bimbos, a heavily used crutch here, are not even close to humorous, but that’s not really the actresses’ fault, because their dialogue was so bad, there was nothing to save their performances. If you’re gonna bring two stock bimbo characters to the party, make sure they don’t say shit, especially when you can’t write comedy.

THE TA-TAs (above)

Also can we deep-six the fuckin’ reality TV/Girls Gone Wild set-ups as well? In a month this is the second horror movie I’ve watched that uses this already tired device to get people in the woods. People go to the woods on their own. It’s called camping. HATCHET at least has a swamp ghost tour to get them out there, but the stupid Girls Gone Wild producer and the two bimbos in tow are a groaner. Everybody, write these set-ups out of your scripts right now.

Besides these faults, HATCHET really does deliver the goods. It has a vision it pretty much succeeds at it, especially in the over-the-top gore department. The gas-powered sander to the face is a personal fave.

I also appreciate its brevity. At 78 minutes, you really know the director had his ideas down pat and ran with it. Most movies need not be more than 90 minutes, horror movies even less. It’s a compact, well-made gore fest that fails only when it overlaps genres.

Old school horror though? Not really, because this funny business is way too modern. Now I can say HATCHET is a welcome and much needed addition to the horror genre in the 21st Century, but that may be because most of its ilk just blows from the first frame, which HATCHET does not. You could do a hell of a lot worse, and more than likely, if you’ve read this far, you probably have.

I can only hope for Green’s sake (and for Petey Waco’s), he stays away from the funny in the future.

Waco says if he ever sees Green, he’s gonna punch him in the nuts and steal out of his wallet the four bucks he spent on HATCHET.

In other words, don’t be all ha-ha when mixing the blood and ta-tas.

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