Hatchet II

What A Hack Job!
I must say I really enjoyed Hatchet 2. Though originality is zip, I still found it somewhat refreshing. Essentially it's a rehash of the first film with the body count and the gore upped a notch. The survivor of the first film's massacre, Marybeth(here played by Danielle Harris) decides to go back to the swamp and take care of killer Victor Crowley once and for all. She gets Reverend Zombie(Tony Todd) to accompany her, and he rounds up a bunch of locals to go on the hunt. Of course Reverend Zombie has his own selfish reasons for going along on this shindig. And of course another massacre ensues.
I'm not gonna say that you'll like this film if you liked the first one, coz it seems as though many folks who liked the first one hated this one.
I though it was a lot of fun. In recent years there has been a tidal wave of horror films that claim to be in the style of 70/80 horror grindhouse cinema. I found most of these films to be failures through their use of CGI gore and...

Adam Green raises the gorescore in Hatchet 2...but his plotting still needs work
Adam Green's slasher Hatchet (Unrated Director's Cut) (2006), ended unexpectedly with the character Marybeth, played by Tamara Feldman, being tossed into the swamp by crazed killer Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder). Hatchet 2 (2010) picks up right where Hatchet ended, with Marybeth hitting the water, however the transition isn't exactly smooth, as Danielle Harris replaces Feldman, who does not reprise her role as Marybeth. The version of the film on DVD is "uncut and unrated", supposedly identical to that which played in theaters.

As in the first film, the best thing about Hatchet 2 are the kills, which are prodigious, extremely gory, and intended to go beyond what has been done before. The carnage is so excessive and over the top, that you become numb to the violence, as the film loses any ties to reality, becoming more of a bizarre spectacle, rather than a really horror thriller.

Marybeth...

GREAT SEQUEL
MAY CONTAIN MINOR PLOT SPOILERS. The movie opens with Marybeth escaping from the monster Victor Crowley. She is helped by one-eye Jack. Later Jack discovers Marybeth is a Dunstan and orders her out and to go talk to Rev. Zombie. Victor shows up at Jack's shack, rips out his intestine then uses it as a cord to pop off his head. The killing and gore in this movie can best be described as "Troma" style. Every death scene hits a major squirting artery. This beginning scene also has the bulk of the movie's nudity as Jack views a found video camera.

Marybeth, who is perhaps the worst at acting in this film, visits Rev. Zombie (Tony Todd) who explains how Victor Crowley became a ghost/legend/killer with a remarkable story telling voice aka the James Earl Jones of horror movies. As it turns out, Zombie's boat was lost in Honey Island Swamp. He forms a posse (including one hot blond for one last nude/sex scene) to retrieve his boat and to kill Victor Crowley once and for all...

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