Merrick here…

Jack Torrance sent in this a look at HATCHET, which has been screening all over the place – playing London’s Fright Fest last week.

He liked it a lot; he says its “an unapologetically violent, gory, visceral ride which the audience lapped up.”

Sounds like the good old days...

I saw Adam Green's HATCHET at London's Frightfest last week. I've been keeping track of this film ever since it was first announced back in 2004 that Green would be making a hardcore old school slasher with the definitive Jason Voorhees, Kane Hodder. As a fan of slashers, that news got me excited. And as Hodder had been unfairly excluded from Freddy Vs Jason, it was great that he would be playing a new slasher character from the get-go. My anticipation was amped up when it was confirmed Robert Englund and Tony Todd would have cameos.

Green introduced the screening and told us he's one of us, a proud horror fan. And believe me, Hatchet is most definitely the work of a true horror fan. It's one big, glorious middle finger to political correctness and all the anodyne, bland, PG-13 shit that's been fed to us (did someone say Stay Alive, Boogeyman and Darkness Falls?! Not me!). Green's feature debut is an unapologetically violent, gory, visceral ride which the audience lapped up. Kills, gore, girls, breasts, blood, laughs. This has it all in spades.

Most of you know the basic story by now, so I won't cover that ground again. What makes Hatchet special is that it has what none of the Friday the 13ths and most of the Halloweens and Elm Streets lacked, and that's a good script and a genuinely talented cast. If it had just been lots of gruesome violence, it would have still been enjoyable but nothing more than a series of spectacular kills. The characters are actually interesting and well drawn. Hodder said in an online interview that he thought a lot of the dialogue read like a Tarantino script. And he was right. In between the gut ripping, the audience was laughing much of the time at the witty exchanges between the characters. Deon Richmond almost steals the show with his perfect comic timing, especially in a scene where he tries to lure the killer, Victor Crowley, out of hiding with a series of insults.

The cameos by Englund and Todd were greeted with delight by the Frightfest audience. Green himself does a Hitchcock and appears early on in a Mardi Gras scene.

As for Victor Crowley, this guy makes Jason look like a boy scout. He doesn't kill his victims. He annihilates them. Green is like a kid in a candy store when it comes to staging the deaths. You can sense that he's putting on screen what he and other fans have been hankering for and not getting from much of the horror in the last decade. Crowley decapitates, stabs, tears, mutilates, dismembers, rips. This is all out, no holds barred splatter and the audience applauded almost every kill.

If I have one quibble, it's that it could have been longer. Ninety minutes is the standard duration for slasher flicks but it goes by so fast, you're left wanting more. I hope this is the hit it deserves to be. Green says he planned Hatchet as the first of a trilogy. I for one can't wait to see this again, and I can't wait for Hatchet II!