Swamp Meat

Blu Review: HATCHET 2
18 – 85mins – 2010
Written by: Adam Green
Directed by: Adam Green
Starring: Danielle Harris, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Parry Shen, Tom Holland, R.A. Mihailoff, AJ Bowen, Alexis Peters, Ed Ackerman, David Foy, Colton Dunn, John Carl Buechler
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Following immediately on from Hatchet's abrupt mid-scene conclusion [sic], Danielle Harris steps into Tamara Feldman's sodden shoes as lone slaughter survivor Marybeth Dunston in this sick slasher sequel to Adam Frozen Green's retro-inspired cult splatter hit – a small-but-cocky film which prided itself on not being a sequel, a remake or “based on a Japanese one”, but now seems to be the start of an irrepressible franchise (Hatchet III is due next year, and there's the inevitable talk of it being shot in 3D).

An expansion to “hatchet-faced fuck” Victor Crowley's (Kane Friday the 13th Hodder) tragic legend starts things off promisingly by giving reason to the seemingly senseless murder of Marybeth's father and brother at the start of the 2006 original, while reciprocally giving purpose to Tony Final Destination Todd's eccentric junk-hawker Reverend Zombie, whose gravel-voiced character is granted a lot more screen time after his blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo last time around.

Convinced by a jaded but resolutely determined Marybeth to almost immediately return to the Louisiana swamp she only barely escaped from alive mere hours before (with a less-than-sound excuse to collect the bodies of her slaughtered kin and, if he's hanging about and actually can be killed, exact revenge on the deformed bayou butcher, too), Zombie rounds up a gang of gun-totin' red neck 'ard nuts to join the suicidal expedition, under the pretence that they are heading into Crowley's murderous haunt simply to bring back Zombie's tour boat which his inexperienced assistant (Parry Shen) lost on Marybeth's less-than-rosy first trip.

It is here that Hatchet 2 picks up the pace and returns to safe/predictable territory, with the group of boorish, uncharismatic stereotypes (one of them is even called Cleatus for gawdsake!) being picked off in ever-more imaginatively twisted manners. If depraved bloodshed with a self-aware wink to the audience is all you crave then Adam Green more than delivers with this second swing of the axe, but I found it disappointingly unprogressive, as if the young writer/director simply chose the safe “more of the same” route after realising how much money – and fame – he garnered from the first iconic schlockbuster.


In a CR@B Shell: It's a shame that the neat additions to Victor Crowley's mythology weren't simply interwoven into the undersized original as they would have elevated that out of predictability and saved us from watching the exact same film all over again. Hatchet 2 delights in gleefully warped and ever-more extreme carnage, it just carries the unmistakable stench of unnecessity along with it.
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Break In, Break Out & Break Apart

Now that I'm back with LoveFilm (oh how I've missed you, promise me we'll never be apart again, etcetera), the rate with which I receive and watch films has increased - and therefore so has my review load. So here are three concise critiques which see Russell Crowe break into a prison, eyeless reanimated beasts break out of the earth and the ghost of a deformed madman breaking people apart. Now there's diversity for you...

DVD Review: HATCHET
18 – 82mins – 2006

A host of retro splatter film icons (Tony Candyman, Final Destination Todd, Robert “Freddy Kreuger” Englund, Kane “Leatherface”, “Jason Voorhees” Hodder, Friday the 13th Part VII director John Carl Buechler) and some sensationally cruel death sequences (people pulled apart, a girl taking a sander to the face, a woman split in two from the jaw down) do wonders to cover up a simple one-dimensional plot in this gleefully twisted love letter to old-school American horror films from up-and-coming auteur Adam Green.

It’s a glossy production for sure; the image is much cleaner than the grittier and more plausible Frozen (Green’s other major horror release, reviewed HERE), while the camera never shies away from the buckets of gore and twisted prosthetics. The humour is also snappy and tongue-in-cheek (“Can you spot me for this?” “Why, you out of money?” “Nah, I just refuse to pay for this shit!”), while the short runtime means things never outstay their welcome (particular not the all-too-sudden mid-scene cut at the end).

The only downside is that the linear storyline is far too conventional: as the motley crew of tourists, wannabe porn stars (really), camera men and sullen locals board a dodgy haunted swamp tour on the Louisiana Bayou, you can instantly predict who will survive and who will make tasty cannon fodder for the ghost of maniacal and mutilated Victor Crowley (Hodder), whose legend is far more real than any of the unsuspecting saps suspect…

CR@B Verdict: aaaaa

DVD Review: THE NEXT THREE DAYS
12 – 135mins – 2010

Not a film I was in any great hurry to see (hardly the right attitude, I know, but I’ve got to be up front), but having been handed a copy with a strong recommendation I thought I’d give it a chance. As I suspected, I can’t claim to ever being enraptured by it, but it’s an adequate-enough thriller, if a little overlong, implausible and somewhat predictable once you’ve read the synopsis. Hardly a glowing reference, is it?

Paul Casino Royale Haggis adapted and directed Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in this remake of the 2008 French thriller Pour Elle (Anything For Her). Following an altercation at work, Lara (Banks) and John (Crowe) Brennan’s house is intruded by police and Lara is arrested for murder. Over the course of the next three years all appeals fail and John slowly becomes obsessed with the notion that the only way Lara will ever get out to see her son (Insidious' Ty Simpkins) grow up is if she is broken out of prison. So starts his criminally far-fetched plan…

At over 2hours in length, I was surprised at how much of the plot was crammed into the first all-too-brief scene, while John goes from inept novice to fugitive genius all-too-quickly. Much like him, we never for a second suspect that Lara is actually guilty, but that doesn't stop the police from being as incompetent as the “miscarriage of justice” plot demands. The film’s major failing, however, is in its pace, which covers “The Last Three Years” in a snowballing flash before defrosting at a crawl as the plan nears fruition in “The Last Three Days”.

CR@B Verdict: aaaaa

DVD Review: THE PACK (LA MEUTE)
18 – 81mins – 2010

A misty, murky and mysterious little French horror which does a grand job of challenging your genre expectations by changing course thrice during its succinct duration. What begins as an off-kilter road movie – goth traveller Charlotte (Émilie Dequenne) picks up grubby hitchhiker Max (Benjamin Biolay) and they stop at a ramshackle truck stop owned by hick matriarch La Spack (Yolande Moreau) – descends into hillbilly torture porn in a Wrong Turn vein before the eponymous creatures are unleashed to wolf down some revitalizing human plasma in a tense “man versus the monsters” climactic stand-off.

The blind, soil-dwelling zombie miners are a wickedly gruesome bunch (think The Descent’s Crawlers morphed with Romero’s lumbering Living Dead-ites) but they are criminally underused – Franck Richard’s film spends so much time detailing Charlotte’s hunt for the missing Max, her off-hand statement to the retired eccentric local sheriff (Phillippe Nahon; so far removed from your expectation of law enforcement that he may as well be in La Horde) and her eventual capture, that the blood-thirsty mole-men only show up once in the entire first hour.

Finally, a nifty attempt at a curveball epilogue works really well at taking the story full circle (and being startling and just a little bit freaky all at once) until that old chestnut of “it’s just a dream” decimates the impact and makes the diversion feel more like a disjointed deleted scene which has accidentally been edited into the main feature by mistake. It makes for a crushingly disappointing finale to what should have been the most crucial scene in the film.

CR@B Verdict: aaaaa

Scarelift

DVD Review: FROZEN
15 – 93mins – 2010
Written by: Adam Green
Directed by: Adam Green
Starring: Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers, Ed Ackerman, Rileah Vanderbilt, Kane Hodder, Adam Johnson, Chris York, Peder Melhuse
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Three friends. Five nights. Forty feet in the air. Temperatures dropping below zero. One chairlift. No way out. This is the terrifying situation which college-goers Parker O’Neil ( Bell ), Joe Lynch (Ashmore) and Dan Walker (Zegers) find themselves in when a series of miscommunications lead the staff at Mount Holliston ski resort to close down for the week in director Adam Hatchet Green’s ultimate endurance test.

What starts out as irritation at the “malfunctioning” ski lift quickly snowballs into panic and desperation as the lights go out and realisation dawns that nobody knows they are still up there. What do you do: Wait for help? Scream until you’re hoarse? Climb? Jump? Freeze to death?! All of these scenarios present themselves to the fraught and freezing trio as day turns to night, frostbite sets in, wild wolves circle below and tensions rise as all hope of rescue fades.

Although Frozen is designated a horror film, and horrible things do happen in it, I deem it would be better described as a tragic character piece. Relating to the livelihoods of the three main players and associating with their pain as their situation worsens is paramount to enjoying this film (if indeed “enjoying” is the appropriate word for such a gloomy and disheartening tale); their nuances and personalities are well portrayed by the little known actors and they feel like real people in a really horrendous predicament.

The wolves, too, are real wolves, not CGI beasties. Their movements are natural and their behaviour believable, which makes their actions all the more gruesome. Furthermore, the small scale and minimalist feel of the film, as well as the less glossy finish to this low-budget effort, all accumulate to its advantage: this isn’t a cheesy and implausibly farfetched shocker, this could happen to you!


In a CR@B Shell: A tense and distressing rough-edged chiller with three remarkably authentic lead performances which will have you Frozen to the edge of your seat – just don’t fall off, whatever you do!!
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