Hatchet

Over-the-Top Gory and Violent Louisiana Swamp Slasher Comedy.

Good: The cast and acting works. Well above average for the genre. The violence and gore is mostly kept on-screen and in focus. No CGI, just good old special effects. Extra points for real vomiting. While this is a pretty gory movie, it is actually a comedy, with varying degrees of success. The violence serves as a comedic aspect parallel to the jokes. And it works, for the most part.

The killings, that is.

Bad: The verbal humor is admittedly also better than average for the genre, but it gets too much for my taste. This movie doesn't even try to be scary, and the cast are yapping on, sit-com style, throughout the movie. Luckily they haven't screwed it up as much as they could have, and the verbal humor does serve as a build-up to hysterical bursts of laughter during the killing scenes. It works and is funny at times, but it's just too much overall.

The villain's back story is thin, goofy and uninteresting. Crowley himself works sometimes, but sometimes not. He's certainly no new Jason or Michael in my opinion.

However, despite all its flaws, I felt entertained. While there are much fewer and "shorter" killings in this film, I can't remember seeing something this in-your-face gory since Braindead. The over-the-top gore and the sickly hilarious ways in which it's presented are this movie's strong points, while the plot and (partially) the humor are its weak points.