Hatchet – Unrated Director’s Cut (2007/Anchor Bay/DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Feature: C
At what
points are even diehard gore/slasher fans sick of being conned? Writer/director Adam Green’s Hatchet (2007) was first promoted as a
1970s style (read Texas Chain Saw
Massacre) slasher flick, now the package backtracks and calls it “old
school” at a point where that has been rendered so meaningless by endless
recycling of films and actors from the genre that every release that begins to
claim any authenticity involving the genre should be considered extremely
suspicious and yet another cash-in disaster.
Here we
go with another swamp land (never say rainforest here, cause that’s not scary
enough) owned by a lonely man who is infamous, may be dead or alive (or both)
and will kill all trespassers. Too bad
he did not hack the master script apart before this could be made.
Instead
of a real slasher thriller (even as graphic as this can get, it becomes a spoof
of itself quickly) feels more like a bad section of the ill-fated Twilight Zone – The Movie (1983) trying
to be an outright Horror installment, so by being so squarely in the mainstream
1980s (which did everything to kill slasher (as well as intelligent Horror)
films and succeeded) it is a failure from the first of its many, many, dumb,
unfunny jokes. This is the “Unrated
Director’s Cut” as if we should be impressed, but if only some had yelled
“Cut!” before this was finished. The
result is a tired disappointment.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 is good looking for an HD shoot simply because
they decided not to gut the color, so they did one thing correctly. This is still phony looking and the make-up
effects are more obvious. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 is surprisingly unspacious and flat, with limited soundfield and
plays as well in Dolby 2.0. Extras
include a mixed gag reel, several featurettes and a group audio commentary of
cast and crew that is also flat.
- Nicholas Sheffo
