Hatchet

One of Hatchet's taglines is, "It's not a remake.  It's not a sequel.  And it's not based on a Japanese one."  While this is technically true, it's not really anything new either, as writer/director Adam Green does his best to make this feel like another '80s slasher.

After the opening, in which a fishing trip turns deadly for a father and son (Robert Englund and Joshua Leonard in the first of many cameos by horror film vets), the action shifts to the streets of New Orleans, where Mardi Gras festivities are in full swing.  Ben (Joel David Moore), despondent over a recent breakup, is tired of drinking and looking at boobs.  His friend Marcus (Deon Richmond) reluctantly joins him for a haunted swamp tour.  Unfortunately, the boat sinks, leaving the tour group to discover that there is some truth to one of the local legends when they come face-to-face with deformed backwoods madman Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder).

Crowley is not a particularly unique villain, a mix between Cropsy and Jason Voorhees.  There are no chase sequences here; Crowley appears out of nowhere, howls loudly, and begins slaughtering people in gruesome ways.  This is one area the film doesn't skimp on, as heads are ripped in half and twisted off and limbs are torn off and tossed around.  The victims are shown no mercy, as Crowley goes for the overkill every time.  Not content with simply taking a belt sander to a woman's face, Crowley then impales her.  After ripping off one guy's arms, he grabs his body and slams it against a tombstone.  Refreshingly, the effects are traditional prosthetics and buckets of fake blood rather than CGI.

It's worth mentioning that the group doesn't actually encounter Crowley until more than halfway through the film's short 84-minute runtime.  Rather than playing it straight and using this time to build suspense, Green injects a lot of humor into the script.  Some of it works (Tony Todd's "chilling" story of why he no longer does haunted swamp tours at night), but most of it doesn't.  The dialogue spewed by the two Girls Gone Wild-esque aspiring actresses is the worst.  One doesn't realize that the cops and the police are one and the same and wonders whether 911 is the correct number to dial to reach them.  They also trade insults such as "Brush your teeth much?" and "Your nipples are dumb."  Making the dialogue intentionally stupid doesn't make it funny.  Equally bad are those occasions where the characters take time to explain an already unfunny joke rather than letting us try to forget it.  At one point, Marcus calls the Asian tour guide "Jackie Tucker," then goes on to clarify, "Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker."

However, Richmond is pretty funny as Marcus, and he hits more than he misses.  I got a kick out of the scene where he asks Ben to spot him some money for the swamp tour.  Ben asks, "Why, you don't have any cash?"  Marcus drops the pretense of looking in his pockets and replies, "No, I'm just not paying for this bullshit."  Parry Shen is also hilarious as the faux-Cajun-accented guide who clearly has no idea what he's doing.  Tamara Feldman is the weakest link, a shame because it soon becomes clear that her character is the heroine.

In the end, Hatchet is an odd one, attempting to be both a throwback to the slashers of the '80s and a self-referential parody, but not excelling at either.