A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Taking a riverboat trip into the Louisiana swamps, a group of tourists and their ride find a local legend about a psychotic serial killer living in the swamps true and must find a way of surviving his blood- soaked rampage.On the whole this was an absolutely fun, fantastic slasher. One of the best parts to this one is that glorious throwback feeling to the slashers and of the past, and nearly every aspect of this is found throughout here. Starting with the back-story here, this is a classic sense of unwarranted trauma and abuse which is a classic example of a supposed slasher back-story that carries this one along. More to the point, the film's love of old-school special effects means that everything here is done with prosthetic make-up and not through CGI, which is a real blast here giving the actions a much more impressive feel to these scenes. That also brings up the film's other great elements in a series of spectacularly brutal and graphic kills here that make for a really exciting time watching the carnage on display here as it rips people to pieces, hacks off limbs and really just displays no outward rationale for keeping people in one piece. That these come from a fine assortment of action-packed stalking scenes is quite nice here and really gets this going nicely, as it starts with the early backs troy scenes and then carries on through the staking scenes of the group after being stranded in the swamp where the first attack on the couple gets this one going nicely. There's other big scenes here with the attack on the tour-guide and the eventual escape, as well as the big battle in the tool-shed and the cemetery chase which all make for great action-packed scenes that include the great gore and suspense throughout. That suspense, coming not only from the stories and tall- tales while also showcasing the absolutely creepy swamps and shack locations here which really help move this along as well as the unrelenting gore make this so good. About the only flaw here is the longer amount of time this takes to get to the swamp with the rather lame celebrations and tour-boat trip that takes forever to move along. Otherwise, this one was simply a blast.Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, Graphic Language and drug use.

HATCHET is a surprisingly decent modern-day slasher made as a tribute to the 1980s horror flicks of old. The best thing about it is that writer/director Adam Green (who also made the excellent FROZEN) is clearly a huge fan of the genre and a guy who pays tribute to it in every respect.Of course, let's not kid ourselves here: this is hardly ground-breaking stuff, and the cheesy dialogue is a little, well, overripe at times. It's also a low budget film although location photography in Louisiana helps make up for that. The storyline is a predictable one in which a tour group visit the bayous by boat only to fall foul of an indestructible killer with a horrifically mutilated face who begins to dispatch them one by one.HATCHET is all about the old-school gore effects and in this respect it comes up trumps time and time again. The killer - played to the hilt by Kane Hodder - uses all manner of implements to take out his victims, and the death scenes are a real hoot that celebrate good old-fashioned prosthetic effects rather than dwelling on sleazy torture porn or the like. Sure, the characters are one-dimensional, but that doesn't matter: this is a fast-paced tribute to the genre and one that works very well indeed; oodles of humour helps with that. Watch out for the Robert Englund, Joshua Leonard, and Tony Todd cameos.

The casting is too self aware, too much winking at the camera, so to speak: horror film icons Tony Todd, Robert Englund, Kane Hodder (in two roles) and John Carl Buechler, in what is largely a Friday the 13th satire; the film's climax even takes place on a boat in the middle of the water, with the girl being pulled underwater, ala the original Friday the 13th. Perhaps if they hadn't spent so much of the budget on hiring those names, they could have hired more background extras to fill out the Mardi Gras scenes, instead of using close-cropping and frenetic camera-work to try to hide the fact that there are only about 20 people present at what is supposed to be Mardi Gras. After that shaky intro, a group of people go on a Haunted Swamp tour in Louisiana, only to be set upon by a mutant hillbilly living in the backwoods, who proceeds to hack them to gory bits. The film looks good once they get out of the city and into the swamps, but it doesn't work as a tribute to earlier horrors, because of the sharp comic dialogue, which is well delivered by its main cast of relatively unknowns, and had me laughing hysterically several times. The comedy simultaneously works in its favour and against it. It also doesn't have enough scares or shocks to work as a horror film on its own, despite buckets of blood and gore, and an overwhelmingly blood-drenched ending. The main cast are all good in their roles, and Joleigh Fioravanti, especially, is gorgeous and always fun to watch. I did enjoy this film, but more as a comedy, rather than a horror, at least until its awful ending, where everyone is killed, and the door is left open for the seemingly contractually obligated sequel.

I'm writing this review after a second viewing of Hatchet. I do love a good/daft horror/slasher movie and this one was billed as being right up there with the best of them, plus even a homage to the classics of the seventies and eighties.In short, I didn't like it at first. However, after a couple of years I decided to watch it again and see if I missed anything.Even now, I probably wouldn't say it's an absolute classic, but it is a decent enough little yarn (with plenty of blood).Did I say 'plenty' of blood? I meant TONNES. In fact, the producers obviously know they're going a bit over the top and must have had great fun throwing bucketloads of the red stuff at trees after every kill takes place.It's quite a short film (it doesn't really need to be any longer) and, after the thumping Marilyn Manson opening song, we meet about a group of people who go on a boat ride into the swamps of America and end up on the wrong end of a maniac's hatchet. The kills are very violent and, if you're looking for gore, you'll find it here. The best part of the film is the characters. Whether they're horrible or nice, they're entertaining. There's plenty of amusing banter between them to keep us amused (special mention to the two *ahem* 'actresses' who continually bicker with each other all the way through).These good characters go some way to make up for the film's major flaw: they don't kill the killer. This slasher film possibly has the most opportunities to either kill, or severely subdue the nutter with the hatchet, yet they choose to run off every time and leave him to 'get better' and resume coming after them. This is the most annoying part of the film and, if it wasn't for the snappy, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, I would have found myself getting increasingly annoyed with the whole package.All in all, this film is far from perfect, but, if you lower your expectations enough and put your brain on hold, you should enjoy the daftness and gore (like I say, it's not on for long!).Also, kudos to the film-makers for getting Robert Englund, Kane Hodder and Tony Todd on the same cast list.