A few years back, horror fans were given quite a treat: some old school American horror by the name of HATCHET, featuring a grotesquely deformed mass of murdering muscle trudging through the swamp and slaughtering bitches left and right in new and imaginative ways. Director Adam Green went the 80s route of slasher horror and gave us a new character to cheer for, as if mass murderer Victor Crowley was nearly as cool and menacing as Jason Voorhees. And maybe he was the first time around, but HATCHET II ended up being such a bore and killed any momentum or interest the Crowley character stirred in me the first time around, and made sure that we never needed another entry in the series. But hot f*ck was I wrong, as the teaser trailer for HATCHET III launched last week to receptive genre fans everywhere… except me. Cause I could give two flying f*cks about this or any other movie starring deformed freak of nature, Victor Crowley.
I’m all about slasher franchises and think it’s an area of cinema sourly missing from today’s constant array of new releases. Sure, we had the SAW franchise knocking one off every October, replaced by the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies… but neither are slasher franchises. I’m not asking for more FRIDAY THE 13THs or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREETs (though that’d be awesome), but someone new for this generation to cheer for. And Victor Crowley isn’t that someone. Yes, the first one was decent enough: had a good set up, took place in a spooky swamp, featuring plenty of awesome kills, and the killer was one to be reckoned with. But HATCHET II pissed everything the franchise had going for it away in a pile of steaming defecation.
I guess it’s the whole “been there, done that” feel the movie had going for it. We’re given more background around the events of Crowley, but nothing we hadn’t seen in Part 1 and nothing we needed to see to give a shit about the character. We’re set back in the same swamp just hours/days after the first massacre, which I can sorta get behind if the events that followed were (more or less) exactly like the events that preceded it. And to hell if I know exactly what was missing, but there was something just gone from PART II that the first one had. Class? No… Charm? Maybe… Entertaining qualities? Yeah… Hard to pinpoint exactly what the dealio was with PART II but that shit rubbed me the wrong way and killed any chance of me caring about the franchise ever again. And apparently, the same was said for director Adam Green himself, as he stepped down from the director’s chair for PART 3 (but stayed on as producer and writer, so go figure).
Here’s my thing: there’s been way better movie maniacs over the last decade that would have all been better franchised characters to build off of, and yet we seem to only be stuck with Crowley as the one that keeps going back to the well. You know what I want? Another Harry Warden movie. That’s right, the masked miner with love issues from MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D would be a way better killer to build a franchise off of. They set the first movie up for a sequel, why the eff haven’t they made it already? You know it must have made more bank than HATCHET ever could have imagined, and I doubt it cost that much to make… so what gives? Give me a new Harry Warden movie any day of the week before giving me another borefest with Victor Crowley charging through the swamp (yet again) knocking off people that should never be in the swamp in the first place (yet again). It’s boring already, let’s move on!
Maybe it’s the booze talkin’, but I just don’t care about the HATCHET franchise or Victor Crowley. HATCHET 3 (check out the trailer below) appears to be pretty much the same f*cking thing all over again, but this time with a SWAT Team in the swamp? That doesn’t even make sense. Danielle Harris also returns to put an end to the curse… oy. I’m already bored just thinking about where this movie is going… probably because the HATCHET series is so “been there, done that” and where it’s been before wasn’t all that awesome to begin with. Give me another MY BLOODY VALENTINE, or better yet, go back to the drawing board and give us a new movie maniac to root for time and time again, because Victor Crowley isn’t cutting it.