Are you sure the number is 911?
Hatchet
M'House
DVD
12/23/07
A few months ago I read about a movie called Murder Party on Ain't it Cool's weekly upcoming DVD release post. I'd never head of it, but Harry mentioned that it had been playing film festivals and people just loved it. So I rented it without finding out anything further and loved it. Ended up seeing it again a week later and still loved it. Immediately bought it and have been telling everyone I know who would like that sort of movie that they need to see it. And just about all of them do. So when Hatchet got a similar write up on Ain't it Cool, I decided to give it a chance.
Hatchet is billed as a throwback to R-Rated 80s slasher movies and was intended to be an antidote to crappy PG-13 horror. The problem is that it's basically crappy R-rated horror. It does have some good bits. Joel Moore and Deon Richmond are good as the two buddies who make a bad decision to go on a night swamp tour outside New Orleans. The movie's worth watching just for them. And Buffy's Mercedes McNab has some brilliantly stupid dialogue.
The problem is that after the set up, once it actually becomes a slasher movie, it becomes just another boring slasher movie. The slasher himself is especially bland and lacks any sort of iconic imagery that you get with characters like Freddy, Jason, or Candyman (Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, and Tony Todd all make cameos just to drive in that point), so you have just another backwoods mutant running around killing people. Seriously, once the killer shows up everyone runs around in circles getting picked off until you have the obligatory handful of survivors and pretty much the only ending you can have because it's been written in such a way that it can't end in any other way. Not because it's clever or original, but because it's sloppy.
At risk of sounding like an old fart, I think I've grown out of slasher flicks. I think maybe middle school and high school is the ideal time for them and then you realize that most of them are just crap. I still like a handful of the - Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Scream. But mostly they're crap. Cheap, profitable crap.
Maybe it's time to make one.
HatchetM'House
DVD
12/23/07
A few months ago I read about a movie called Murder Party on Ain't it Cool's weekly upcoming DVD release post. I'd never head of it, but Harry mentioned that it had been playing film festivals and people just loved it. So I rented it without finding out anything further and loved it. Ended up seeing it again a week later and still loved it. Immediately bought it and have been telling everyone I know who would like that sort of movie that they need to see it. And just about all of them do. So when Hatchet got a similar write up on Ain't it Cool, I decided to give it a chance.
Hatchet is billed as a throwback to R-Rated 80s slasher movies and was intended to be an antidote to crappy PG-13 horror. The problem is that it's basically crappy R-rated horror. It does have some good bits. Joel Moore and Deon Richmond are good as the two buddies who make a bad decision to go on a night swamp tour outside New Orleans. The movie's worth watching just for them. And Buffy's Mercedes McNab has some brilliantly stupid dialogue.
The problem is that after the set up, once it actually becomes a slasher movie, it becomes just another boring slasher movie. The slasher himself is especially bland and lacks any sort of iconic imagery that you get with characters like Freddy, Jason, or Candyman (Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, and Tony Todd all make cameos just to drive in that point), so you have just another backwoods mutant running around killing people. Seriously, once the killer shows up everyone runs around in circles getting picked off until you have the obligatory handful of survivors and pretty much the only ending you can have because it's been written in such a way that it can't end in any other way. Not because it's clever or original, but because it's sloppy.
At risk of sounding like an old fart, I think I've grown out of slasher flicks. I think maybe middle school and high school is the ideal time for them and then you realize that most of them are just crap. I still like a handful of the - Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Scream. But mostly they're crap. Cheap, profitable crap.
Maybe it's time to make one.
posted by PunchBuggyBlues at 7:53 AM
1 Comments:
"Maybe it's time to make one."
God, yes. Count me in, if it comes to that.
Have you all seen Behind the Mask yet? CHUD was raving about it during the festival circuit, and I must say -- though in the "too clever for its own good" camp -- it might have that particular scratch you found missing in Hatchet.
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