Hatchet II

Hatchet II (2010)

29% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 24 reviews)

Runtime: 89 minutes

Directed by: Adam Green

Starring: Danielle Harris, Kane Hodder, Tony Todd, R.A. Mihailoff

From: Ariescope Pictures

I had an interesting night at the cinema last night. I went and saw this limited release movie on its opening night; sure, I recently saw the first movie in the series and I didn’t really care for it, but it’s an unrated movie in a theatre run by a big chain (which is an extremely rare happening, to say the least; many of the places which are showing this are AMC joints; you have to give them props for taking a chance on this; besides that there’s not only people wanting this to do well to stick it to the biased and not always consistent MPAA, but also again the idea of this being an original film instead of a remake or a reboot or anything of that nature) and plus a special guest star would be there in attendance, so I had to go.

While I’m not the biggest horror fan by any means, I am more than familiar with this man and I’ve seen some of his movies. I also don’t go to conventions and whatnot, so getting to meet Kane Hodder (i.e. Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th movies from the 7th to Jason X) is a rare opportunity for me. Sad to say, even though the horror sites are plugging this movie VERY hard and they all noted on their sites and on the social media websites that the stars of this movie would be at various places across the United States, only about 2 dozen people at most were there to see him, and that’s including me in the tally. Sigh. But, the people who were there to see him were all happy to see him and they enjoyed the informal Q&A they had with him before and after the movie. Nothing Earth-shattering was said there but it was entertaining watching him and the crowd shoot the s***, and getting an autographed poster from him was pretty neat.

As for the movie… it was better than the first in almost every way, but overall I don’t know if it’s really my thing or not. Sure, the gore effects were neat and VERY graphic (the movie is unrated for a very good reason) and memorable, but the story itself didn’t always make a lot of sense and it was more like a reel of great kills and not much else. At least there was less humor in this than the original movie; while that had its funny moments (so did this movie), there was just too much of it in that one and it just came off badly. Here, the humor wasn’t as often and I appreciated that.

The story starts right after the first one ended, and Marybeth (now played by the always lovely Harris) escapes the swamp and Victor Crowley and makes it back to New Orleans. She meets up with Reverend Zombie (Todd) and explains what happened; as he behind the scenes ran the tourboat that brought everyone to the swamp in the first movie, he, Marybeth, and a party of hunters go back to the swamp to get the boat… and try to take Crowley as a trophy prize. Zombie also explains the origin story of why Victor Crowley was born so deformed.

Like I said, it’s better than the first movie, but overall I wouldn’t say it’s “the horror movie of the year” or anything of that sort. I guess it’s not for me… but a lot of horror fans feel that way too. However, if you do enjoy ridiculously gory movies (I do… not always, though) and also enjoy some T&A, then you should probably go and see it if you’re able to. I mean, part of my enjoyment of this may be that I saw it with a crowd, rather than alone at home like I did with the first Hatchet. The audience laughed at the right moments and cringed at the goriest moments. At least I can say is that the acting is better overall (the top three leads all did a nice job; Hodder even had a teary-eyed dramatic scene when he also played Victor Crowley’s father. Oh, and he also has a sex scene; Kane was happy to mention that last night.

I’ll be back Wednesday night with a new review.