Hatchet

Review

When people talk about shitty 2000s slashers and how trashy they are, they’re talking about Hatchet. This movie truly is the pinnacle of the grimy, exploitative feel of poorly written, overly gorey 2000s slashers, all that to say I loved it for what it is. These movies are defined by their banger soundtracks, poorly written characters, and hit-or-miss, usually miss, humor and Hatchet checks all the boxes.

Hatchet is about a guy who travels to New Orleans during Mardi Gras after breaking up with his long term girlfriend and instead of partying he decides to go on a haunted swamp tour. The tour takes him and the other guests to a forbidden part of the swamp where the ghost of Victor Crowley is said to roam. After the boat begins to sink and the group is attacked by gators they end up running into Victor Crowley himself who begins to pick them off one by one with his superhuman strength until our main character and the love interest are the only characters to escape (if I remember correctly).

The best part about this movie is probably the gore. This movie is brutal and characters get torn apart with little hesitation and lots of blood. One of the most memorable scenes from the movie is when the touristy old man gets grabbed by the mouth and has the entire top half of his head ripped off. It’s the first kill in the movie and it really sets up what kind of killer Victor Crowley is going to be.

The other strength of this movie is the comedy. This movie does have some pitfalls in the comedy, some of it does teeter on racist as is typical of this era of movies, but overall there are some solid jokes in this film and I did laugh out loud a couple of times. Probably my favorite joke was the tour guide dropping not only his clearly fake pseudo-cajun accent but also the stereotypical east asian accent at the most pivotally tense moments of the film. I died.

Other than that, this movie is a bit of a copy paste of every other 2000s slasher. Overall, I had a fun time with this movie but I’m really not going to lose sleep thinking about this movie