Hatchet (2006 or 2007, it’s really not clear for some reason)

Trailer: 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: The Season 4 premiere of Duck Dynasty.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Robert Englund! The mark of quality! Well, with the exception of 90% of his movies.

• He and his redneck son are nightfishin’ in a swamp. I don’t know why, is that when the fish are awake?

• Oh and the son, Ainsley, is horror legend Josh from The Blairwich Projects!

• They’re throwing around homophobic slurs a little too much for my liking, but hey, it was the ‘80s… oh, this was 2006? Oh…

• I guess you’re supposed to want these guys to get hatcheted. I’m willing to bet that I’ll want every character in this movie to get hatcheted.

• Robert Englund DEAD! Like his non-Freddy career.

• Well, they both died horribly, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

• I wonder if this is the director’s first feature and he graduated film school in 1996 and got hit by a bus and was in a coma for 7 years and thought that whip cuts and Marilyn Manson was still cool?

• Hey it’s that one weird dude from Dodgeball who looks exactly like Shaggy. He’s by far the best actor in this and he absolutely sucks.

• I will say, New Orleans is a great location for a horror picture. I’m sure it’s happened before but I can’t think of any.

• TONY TODD! Well sorry Shaggy, you’re not even close to the best actor in this now. For some reason I thought Danielle Harris was in this (maybe the sequels) and I’m sorely sorely sorely disappointed.

• So far that’s two horror legends, I hope this continues. I bet Kane Hodder shows up as a male prostitute next.

• It’s horror legend Joel Murray! The 16th best Murray brother!

• So far gore, boobs, horror legends, I’m sure they’ll still screw this up.

• I do appreciate the ethnic diversity of the cast so far. Long story short, they’re going on some kind of Nawlins haunted bus tour. I mean they’re going to haunted locations on a bus, not that the bus is haunted, I don’t think.

• It’s horror legend that “Jump to Conclusions Mat” guy from Office Space!

• Why are the windows on this bus completely gunked up? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a tour?

• Wait, how far are they going? Now they’re out in the middle of nowhere and it’s dark.

• They drove this far to get on a pontoon boat in the dark in a swamp? It’s extremely well lit.

• I like the commitment to the guy drinking his own piss joke.

• Ok I really hate this tour guide guy and the way he talks. Hopefully he’s the first to get hatcheted by local horror legend Victor Crowley.

• So they float by the Crowley shack, but there’s no way they can possibly see anything at all. AT ALL!

• This blonde girl looks super familiar. Oh! It’s Amanda Buckman from Addams Family Values! Wow, I never thought I’d see her boobs repeatedly, but here we are.

• It starts raining and the boat starts sinking, then Jump to Conclusions Mat guy gets his leg bitten by a gator.

• Haha, the gator B-roll looks like a baby gator that you’d buy at a Florida gift shop.

• The boat guide did have a fake creole accent and now that the jig is up he’s reverted to a stereotypical Asian accent. That doesn’t make sense.

• It’s Horror Legend Kane Hodder not as a male prostitute but as Victor Crowley’s dad! Well, I don’t actually know what his dad does to make ends meet.

• So Victor is deformed and his house catches fire via some local no-goods and Kane Hodder accidentally hits him in the face with an axe. Not bad as far as slasher backstories go. Way better than The House of the Devil.

• Ok let’s get on with the friggin’ hatcheting here the movie is more than half over.

MIS

TAH

CROWL

EEEEEEEEEEY!!!

• So Victor (also played by Kane Hodder because he gets two paychecks that way) killed this girl’s dad and brother (Robert Englund and Josh Blairwich) and she somehow knows exactly where his cabin is? And she knows there’s a road a few miles beyond? Then why did she take the boat? Why didn’t she drive there?

• I love that Crowley just comes right out of the cabin and attacks. And finally, some good gore! I guess not thinking that guy would live wasn’t jumping to conclusions.

• So everyone else needs to get the hell out of the swamp and Crowley is of course after them despite taking a bullet to the chest.

• Oh no, horror legend Joel Murray’s neck gets twisted!

• Now all the older people are dead. This movie is ageist.

• Now the Asian guy has no Asian accent. I just don’t care for this individual.

• Joel Murray was from New Jersey! WOOOO!

• There’s an incredibly long scene of the group finding a raccoon in the bushes and it seems to be just to pad the runtime. Oh then Crowley kind of jumps out from the other side, still way too long of a setup.

• Crowley sands one of the porn girl’s faces off, finally chops the guide’s head off, then impales the same girl on a shovel handle. We need 500% more of this.

• Why doesn’t Marybeth take her gun and shoot Crowley in the face?

• “I’m saying we fight back!” “How?!” YOU HAVE A FUCKING GUN!

• Where would Crowley even get gasoline from? Did he just go down to the local Wawa?

• Anyway, they burn him, but then it rains, and they decide to run off instead of shooting him in the face or chopping his head or legs off. Crowley deserves his revenge, and they all deserve to die. But then again, so does he.

• Why is Crowley so strong? Does he lift weights in the dilapidated cabin?

• Well now everyone’s dead except Shaggy and Marybeth, just like we all thought. Although if they die too I’ll sleep just fine tonight.

• Shaggy gets a spear through the foot and they turn it on Crowley with it still in his foot. Well, he’ll never walk again.

• Crowley spits blood in Shaggy’s face, so now he has AIDS and COVID at minimum.

• Again, they just walk off without ensuring that Crowley is dead.

• Oh this ending is a complete and total Friday the 13th ripoff. Sweet piano music is playing over them in a boat. I bet you 500 kroner that Crowley comes up out of the water.

• Oh wow that’s exactly what happens amazing.

• HAHAHA!! So you think Shaggy is reaching his arm into the water to save Marybeth, but it turns out to be Crowley in the boat who has ripped Shaggy’s arm off. ZOINKS!

Final Thoughts: This is a really stupid and pretty cookie-cutter slasher movie. The only semi-unique thing is that it’s set in swampy woods instead of drier woods. But, I am just a huge sucker for over-the-top kills and gore, and this movie does that very well, so I hobbled away fairly entertained. If you want to save your precious time, just watch the kills only below. Looks like there are two sequels that continue that story right where this leaves off, and they do include Danielle Harris as a re-casted Marybeth, but Prime Video only has the R-rated versions for some reason, and that’s simply not what I’m about.

Score: 5.75 Horror Legends (out of 10)