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Hatchet (2006)

Director: Adam Green

Time Out rating

Average user rating

3 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Set in a Louisiana bayou, Adam Green’s old school slasher movie has all the right ingredients for a gruesome gumbo, but lacks an all-important piquancy. Bloody deaths, jokey cameos by Robert Englund and Tony Todd, breast-baring blondes, a killing-by-numbers plot and raucous rock music from pasty-faced poseur Marilyn Manson are thrown into the pot. Yet somehow the tired flavours never quite mingle.
On Halloween night, a hapless tour guide strands lovelorn twentysomething Ben (Joel Moore) and his wise-cracking black pal Marcus (Deon Richmond) in a supposedly haunted swamp. They and their fellow tourists – a porn director, two ditzy ‘actresses’, a middle-aged couple and a shy teenage girl – are then haunted and hunted by hatchet-faced hick Victor Crowley. Burned and hacked with an axe as a child, the hideously deformed Victor now likes to tear off the heads or chop off the limbs of passing strangers. Green’s efforts to strike a balance between knowing humour and no-holds-barred horror are stymied by an erratic tone: a slow, talky build-up gives way to a soggy middle section and a messy, all-stops-out finale.

Author: Nigel Floyd

Time Out London Issue 1937: October 3-9 2007

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User reviews of this film

JAY said...

Posted on Oct 06 2007 20:35 Rubbish, don't waste ur money and time. Watch it for free at movieforumz.com if u really want to watch it.

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jay said...

Posted on Oct 06 2007 20:34 Awful, rubbish, waste of money/time, predictable. I could go on but there's no point. Watch it for free on movieforumz.com, unless u want to waste ur money at the cinema or on the dvd when it's released

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Leona Luk said...

Posted on Sep 09 2007 19:08 As the guy next to me pointed out - it's not really meant to be good... Yes I know I wasn't supposed to be scared, but surely I was meant to be amused.
This is frankly an empty and irrelevant slasher film. Filmed in New Orleans (that's very nice to help their film economy recover) and populated by some in jokes (the wanna-be actress admits she couldn't get into NYU so went to director Green's alma mater Hoffstra), it misses the turn offs that would have resulted in good jokes or good scares.

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