Some horror movies attempt to reinvent the wheel, others try to provoke the audience, and then there are some that simply want to drag you into the swamp and have a good time doing it. Hatchet falls squarely in the latter category, but that isn’t to say this 2006 slasher from Adam Green is without ambition. Written and directed by Green in his feature debut, the movie is an old-fashioned celebration of the era when practical effects, isolated locations and larger-than-life monsters could carry a horror movie without having to apologize for its excesses. Green takes direct inspiration from Friday the 13th [1980], The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974], The Burning [1981], The Hills Have Eyes [1977] and the slasher tradition that surrounds them, not to mention the casting of Robert Englund, Tony Todd and Kane Hodder (Smothered [2016]), which makes the movie almost like a horror convention that has leapt into Louisiana. Hodder’s Victor Crowley is the centerpiece; a grotesquely deformed swamp killer whose very existence separates him from the increasingly interchangeable killers of the period. Hatchet wasn’t interested in reinventing the slasher. It was interesting to remember why audiences became fascinated with the genre in the first place, a task that Green manages to do with more than enough affection to make the movie an exercise in nostalgia.

Kane Hodder

The story begins with Sampson (Robert Englund (Dead & Buried [1981])), an alligator hunter. His son Ainsley (Joshua Leonard (Shark Night [2011])) is deep in the swamp, where their hunting trip ends with both men becoming victims of Victor Crowley. This turn is particularly significant because Sampson is not another body for the eventual body count; he is Marybeth’s father. His disappearance is the reason she comes to look for him. During Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Ben (Joel David Moore (Julia X [2011])), still miserable after being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, and his friend Marcus (Deon Richmond (Scream 3 [2000]])) decide to take a haunted swamp tour instead of spending the night partying. After Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd (Candy Corn [2019])) refuses to take them out because of an earlier lawsuit, they find an inexperienced young guide, Shawn (Parry Shen (Victor Crowley [2017])), who takes them into the Honey Island Swamp with a group that includes the so-called adult-film producer Shapiro (Joel Murray (Bloodsucking Bastards [2015])), and his models Jenna (Joleigh Fioreavanti (Trespassers [2006])) and Misty (Mercedes McNab (Thirst [2010])). The armed Marybeth (Tamara Feldman (Alyce Kills [2011) joins them. Shawn’s cheap ghost-tour theatrics at first makes the legend of Victor Crowley sound no more than local folklore until the boat crashes and the tourists are left stranded. Marybeth reveals that her father Sampson and brother Ainsley disappeared while hunting in the same place, and she believes Victor Crowley was responsible. When the group arrives in the vicinity of the old Crowley house, the story she has been carrying with her becomes horrifyingly real. Victor emerges from the dark and begins killing the stranded tourists in gruesome fashion, one by one. He forces Marybeth, Ben and the remaining survivors to search the Crowley estate for whatever weapons they can find while still attempting to comprehend what they are dealing with. The further they go into the swamp, the more Marybeth’s family history becomes inseparable from Victor’s because, as a boy, Sampson was one of those responsible for the cruel prank that led to Victor’s accidental death (an aspect expanded in Part II). The massacre thus becomes something more than a group of tourists who stumbled into the wrong swamp. Marybeth is unknowingly facing the consequence of a tragedy that began with her own father’s generation.

Joel David Moore and Deon Richmond

This puts the movie into an interesting argument about what exactly constituted a revival of the slasher. Hatchet came along at a time when the genre had already gone through several cycles of reinvention. Green was consciously looking back rather than pretending he was taking horror somewhere new. The film’s most direct relatives aren’t the torture films that dominated part of the decade. The film’s most direct relatives are the body-count pictures of the late 1970s and 1980s, where the location, killer and manner of death often took precedence over anything resembling narrative complexity. Victor Crowley fits into that tradition, but Green has given him something that many slashers lack: a mythology that is grounded in the place. The Honey Island Swamp isn’t merely a piece of generic wilderness where people can be killed. The legend of Crowley has been handed from one generation to the next, distorted through local gossip and turned from the story of a deformed child into the tale of an apparently unstoppable monster. There is something familiar about that transformation because horror has always made monsters out of victims after the fact. The human being is gone and the legend remains. Hatchet doesn’t explore that concept with great psychological depth. It gives Victor enough history to keep him from being purely a large man who carries an axe. There is also an amusing generational argument that runs through the movie. Green peppers the film with actors who carry specific associations for horror fans, from Englund’s Freddy Krueger to Todd’s Candyman and Hodder’s Jason, while Buechler’s involvement ties the production directly to the practical-effects era the movie wishes to celebrate. Hatchet is thus both a slasher and a conversation with the people who made slashers memorable.

Mercedes McNab, Joel David Moore, Joel Murray, Deon Richmond, Parry Shen, Tamara Feldman, and Joleigh Fioreavanti

Hatchet isn’t subtle, and measuring it against the standards of psychological horror would miss the point. The dialogue can be uneven, some of the characters exist mostly to deliver jokes before becoming victims, and the movie occasionally mistakes enthusiasm for characterization. None of those flaws negate what Green does right. He knows practical gore has a texture that digital blood cannot counterfeit, that a monster needs a physical presence and that a slasher works best when the audience has anticipation for the next kill rather than simply waiting for the plot to resume. Most importantly, he knows affection for horror history is more valuable when it produces another horror movie rather than merely a collection of references. Hatchet remembers the pleasures of the old slasher without pretending those films were masterpieces of narrative sophistication. Victor Crowley is excessive, ugly and almost absurdly violent, but he is also memorable, which is ultimately what a slasher villain should be. The film doesn’t reinvent the genre. It reaches backward, finds the blood, mud and practical effects that made those movies so entertaining, and brings them into the 21st century without sanding down their rough edges. For horror audiences who remember the days when a swamp, an axe and a grotesque creature were enough to keep an entire theater waiting for the next scream, Hatchet delivers exactly what it promises. Therefore, if you crave a return to bloody, funny and old-fashioned slasher that understands its influences and, more importantly, understands why they still work.

You think you know me?

TAGLINES:

• It’s not a remake. It’s not a sequel. And it’s not based on a Japanese one.
• Old school American Horror.
• Terror Goes Old School
• Victor Crowley Lives
• True Horror Has Returned.
• Stay out of the swamp.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422401/

IMDb Rating: 5.7/10
Baron’s Rating: 6.0/10

Followed by:

Hatchet II (2010)

Hatchet III (2013)

Victor Crowley (2017)