The first person to die in Hatchet, Adam Green’s 2006 throwback to the truly bloody days of American horror, is Robert Englund; the man responsible for bringing us the iconic figure of Freddy Kruger. The relevance of this first blood is obvious; it is a mission statement from the debutant writer / director who wishes to make it clear that whilst what has gone before is important, it is far from sacred. The golden age of the slasher film may be dead and buried, but Hatchet demonstrates that the sub-genre still has plenty of mileage, even if it seldom strays far from the path that has been previously laid.
Hatchet is a proud film. Whilst Hollywood turns its attention to fields afar, looking for a new lease of life to breath into the horror film, Hatchet confidently mocks the masses whilst taking matters into its own hands right underneath their noses. It declares itself as ‘old school American horror’ on the cover of the DVD case and defiantly adds that ‘It’s not a remake. It’s not a sequel and it’s not based on a Japanese one.’ It is fair to say that from the very word go, Hatchet sets out to put right what has gone so wrong with American horror.
In just two years Hatchet has developed cult status, something that very few American horror films have managed in the last two decades. I would suggest a number of reasons for this. The term ‘cult film’ can only be applied retrospectively; there is no handbook for those who wish to make a cult film and therefore a film either gains cult appeal or it doesn’t. Whilst Hollywood continues to source material from oversees, a lot of which already has cult appeal, the likelihood is that they will not be able to replicate such a status domestically. In any case, they wouldn’t want to. Cult films are often independent and thus have a low production budget, minimal exposure and as a result do poorly at the box office. The Hollywood ethos, which has been apparent since the immediate success of the blockbuster, aims for maximum exposure and maximum profit. The chance of a post-1990s Hollywood film gaining true cult status is not only slim but hardly a priority for the major studios.
Hatchet, on the other hand, fits the bill for a cult film perfectly. Its approximate 1.5 million dollar budget was secured by way of the production team showing true guerrilla filmmaking grit and determination. With nothing but belief and a handheld camcorder, Green and producers Sarah Elbert and Cory Neal flew to Louisiana to make a trailer for the film with no financial backing in place or any guarantee that the film would be made. In the resulting teaser a slow, mesmerising camera shot floats through a swamp, just above water level, whilst an eerie childish voiceover recounts the tale of poor Victor Crowley, the film’s antagonist lying in wait. The team were confident of creating a huge buzz on the internet in order to snare a production deal, and by the time that Bloody Disgusting.com and Ain’t It Cool News had had their say, securing the finances for the feature was never in doubt.
It is worth noting that almost all of the horror classics were similarly low key affairs. Black Christmas, the film that truthfully started the slasher cycle, was made with a budget of only 620,000 dollars. John Carpenter’s Halloween, which is more commonly referred to as the origin of the sub-genre, was produced on an even more modest budget of 325,000 dollars. Friday the 13th, Hatchet’s closest compatriot, was made to capitalise on the limited lifespan of the slasher flick and despite being a commercial success, was completed with only an estimated 550,000 dollars. These films were the genesis of American horror’s most prolific era; they provided a foundation for a number of successful franchises as well as a host of instantly forgettable cash-ins. They didn’t disappear overnight, but their quality certainly did. With the exception of Wes Craven’s Scream franchise and Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, American horror has never quite managed to scale the dizzy heights that it managed in the 70’s and 80’s.
Like all the classics, Hatchet revolves around a myth. All the kids told stories about Freddy Kruger, whilst the figures of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers hang over Camp Crystal Lake and the community of Haddonfield like unspeakable and immovable secrets. Crowley, Hatchet’s soon-to-be horror icon, is no different. In fact the character shares such blatant parallels with the likes of Voorhees, Leatherface, Kruger and The Burning’s ‘Cropsy’ that he can hardly be considered original. All are deformed, clear examples of each character’s evil being externalised through visual means – think Bond villains; metal teeth, scars across the eyes etc – and all serve to exact some kind of revenge for their afflictions.
Crowley’s myth shares a particular resemblance to the story of Jason Voorhees. Crowley, born deformed, was taunted by the local kids due to his appearance. His father, who loved him despite his burden, cared for him and tried his best to shield him from the abuse of the other children. One Halloween, a group of trick-and-treaters tried to scare Crowley out of his shed deep in the swamps of Louisiana, but the prank backfired – the shed caught fire with Crowley trapped inside. His father, upon his return, tried frantically to get him out, eventually resorting to using a hatchet to break in and save his son. Unaware that his son’s face was pressed up against the inside of the door the father hacked away, resulting in Crowley’s death. But they say that if you go near the old Crowley house, deep in the thick of the swamp, you can still hear Victor Crowley crying out for his father. When a group of tourists, some of which have hidden agendas, find themselves stranded whilst on a haunted swamp tour, they realise that there is truth to the myth and very little chance of escape.
So just how does Hatchet manage to breath life into the slasher film? The narrative is formulaic, relying on well established themes and stylistically it does nothing new. Perhaps one thing should be made clear; Hatchet is not responsible for reinventing anything. The slasher sub-genre, perhaps more than any other, relies on a set of well versed conventions and Green, keen to give the die hard horror fans what they want, sticks to these stringently. To talk of Green as the saviour of horror would be unwarranted, I actually think that this film could have been made by anyone with an interest in the genre. What Green has done, albeit with conviction and competency, is make a film that was guaranteed to be well received providing that it reached the right audience and given that horror is possibly one of the simplest genres to successfully market, those who put up the money will have been fairly certain of recouping their investment.
Narratively, Hatchet is everything that we have come to expect from the genre. There are no high concept ideals or labyrinthine subplots; the film essentially revolves around a one dimensional plot with the intermittent deaths acting as gruesome set pieces. The question of whether the onscreen events are plausible rarely enters into the equation – what this film needed to deliver, and does, is an impressive body count and not much else. Green’s script work is impressive, switching between light-hearted comedy and no-holds-barred terror often quite whimsically. Green feeds his audience this rich vein of comedy throughout the film, making the expositional scenes seem less tedious and more enjoyable. When the heads start to roll (both figuratively and literally) Hatchet comes across as a well rounded exercise rather than seeming flimsy and disjointed.
Where Green really shines is in delivering the all important sucker punches that the audience love to hate. Crowley’s introduction is a prime example of this; a breakneck shot reverse shot places our unfortunate throng at the bottom of a hill, on top of which lies Crowley’s eerily lit and seemingly derelict shed. An agonisingly slow SteadiCam shot creeps up the slope, switching perspectives from higher to lower ground as the group makes slow progress. After what seems like forever, Crowley bursts through the doorway of his hut, charging down the slope towards the foremost members of the group whilst wielding his hatchet. In an instant Crowley goes from fabrication to fact and it takes him seconds to begin his killing spree. Crowley is light years away from the methodical Michael Myers, as soon as he arrives on the screen the pace of the film lifts, buoyed by the monster’s energy and kineticism. Whereas Myers stalks, Crowley is more comparable to Leatherface; both are a relentless force of evil, lacking direction and restraint.
On an aesthetic level, Hatchet is hard to fault despite never wowing the viewer with slick camerawork. There are no grand establishing shots or any real aspects of cinematographical brilliance; one assumes that the modest budget left little room for experimentation. The fact that the film is set almost entirely at night does well to mask the shortcomings presented by the budget restrictions. The lighting is sparse at times and the intermittent rain appears to be sketchy in widely framed shots but such shortcomings can be forgiven; the overall look of the film is unharmed. If anything, the low-fi aspect of the film is charming. The slasher sub-genre worked through its golden era without any of its flagship films exceeding 2 million dollars in production costs and I have never come across an article criticising the classics because of this.
Of course the most obvious aesthetic element is the film’s special effects, all of which were shot in-camera, in keeping with the old school ethos that the film proudly heralds. Given the advancements in make up and special effects since the heyday of the slasher movie, the effects in Hatchet are equally as impressive as anything that the godfather of gore Tom Savini came up with in the 70’s and 80’s. John Carl Buechler, who has previously worked with both Freddy and Jason, really delivers on this film, which goes the extra mile in terms of blood and guts. The elaborate and memorable deaths in Hatchet easily match those of Halloween, Friday the 13th and the Nightmare on Elm Street films – even surpassing them in terms of inventiveness. Crowley’s most effective weapon, aside from his eponymous hatchet, seems to be his brute strength which he uses to horrifying effect numerous times. His first post-Englund victim is hacked in two from the shoulder down through the torso, his second has her head pulled apart from the jaw upwards, leaving her tongue waggling sickeningly in the air. It’s not so much that these incredibly violent deaths look real but more that their graphic nature renders any notion of realism irrelevant.
Unnerving as it is, the death scenes really are the film’s triumph. After all, what is a slasher film without them? Horror fans will relish the back to basics approach of the film’s special effects team in the face of Hollywood’s CGI fixation and whilst the weak stomached will disagree, there is a grotesque beauty to be admired when considering the amount of craftsmanship that has gone into the execution of each demise. More importantly, the special effects of Hatchet hark back to a time when things couldn’t be achieved with a computer and the crew had to work extensively to achieve the image that they had in their heads. Hatchet captures this artisan mentality perfectly and the film is much better off for it.
One thing that gains Green points is his bypass of the ‘final girl’ convention, which despite being the widely accepted mode of closure in the genre has now undoubtedly grown stale. One of the drawbacks of such generic material is the ease with which the audience can guess exactly what is coming next and when the film is going to end. Traditionally, when the cast is cut down to the last person, and she is female, it’s game over. This is perhaps the only area that Green sees fit to leave uncovered, instead playing out the film with one last obligatory scare that many won’t see coming. If not exactly refreshing, the ending is certainly welcome and it alludes to the fact that true horror fans are hardly concerned with closure. What some would regard as leaving the cinema with a bad taste in their mouths is exactly the opposite for the target audience of this film.
Hatchet may be an exercise in nostalgia, but few could argue that it came at the right time. The cycle of the slasher film came to an end because its formula was being abused, resulting in films that were unworthy of being mentioned in the same category as the classics. Green took it upon himself to pay homage to the films that we all remember from our youths and for that alone he should be praised. The fact that he has delivered a feature which is arguably on a par with the films that it aspires to be is a magnificent achievement for the young director. If Hatchet had been made in the golden age we would be lauding it as one of the greats; it is almost a shame that it missed the boat by 30 years.
Hatchet is a proud film. Whilst Hollywood turns its attention to fields afar, looking for a new lease of life to breath into the horror film, Hatchet confidently mocks the masses whilst taking matters into its own hands right underneath their noses. It declares itself as ‘old school American horror’ on the cover of the DVD case and defiantly adds that ‘It’s not a remake. It’s not a sequel and it’s not based on a Japanese one.’ It is fair to say that from the very word go, Hatchet sets out to put right what has gone so wrong with American horror.
In just two years Hatchet has developed cult status, something that very few American horror films have managed in the last two decades. I would suggest a number of reasons for this. The term ‘cult film’ can only be applied retrospectively; there is no handbook for those who wish to make a cult film and therefore a film either gains cult appeal or it doesn’t. Whilst Hollywood continues to source material from oversees, a lot of which already has cult appeal, the likelihood is that they will not be able to replicate such a status domestically. In any case, they wouldn’t want to. Cult films are often independent and thus have a low production budget, minimal exposure and as a result do poorly at the box office. The Hollywood ethos, which has been apparent since the immediate success of the blockbuster, aims for maximum exposure and maximum profit. The chance of a post-1990s Hollywood film gaining true cult status is not only slim but hardly a priority for the major studios.
Hatchet, on the other hand, fits the bill for a cult film perfectly. Its approximate 1.5 million dollar budget was secured by way of the production team showing true guerrilla filmmaking grit and determination. With nothing but belief and a handheld camcorder, Green and producers Sarah Elbert and Cory Neal flew to Louisiana to make a trailer for the film with no financial backing in place or any guarantee that the film would be made. In the resulting teaser a slow, mesmerising camera shot floats through a swamp, just above water level, whilst an eerie childish voiceover recounts the tale of poor Victor Crowley, the film’s antagonist lying in wait. The team were confident of creating a huge buzz on the internet in order to snare a production deal, and by the time that Bloody Disgusting.com and Ain’t It Cool News had had their say, securing the finances for the feature was never in doubt.
It is worth noting that almost all of the horror classics were similarly low key affairs. Black Christmas, the film that truthfully started the slasher cycle, was made with a budget of only 620,000 dollars. John Carpenter’s Halloween, which is more commonly referred to as the origin of the sub-genre, was produced on an even more modest budget of 325,000 dollars. Friday the 13th, Hatchet’s closest compatriot, was made to capitalise on the limited lifespan of the slasher flick and despite being a commercial success, was completed with only an estimated 550,000 dollars. These films were the genesis of American horror’s most prolific era; they provided a foundation for a number of successful franchises as well as a host of instantly forgettable cash-ins. They didn’t disappear overnight, but their quality certainly did. With the exception of Wes Craven’s Scream franchise and Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, American horror has never quite managed to scale the dizzy heights that it managed in the 70’s and 80’s.
Like all the classics, Hatchet revolves around a myth. All the kids told stories about Freddy Kruger, whilst the figures of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers hang over Camp Crystal Lake and the community of Haddonfield like unspeakable and immovable secrets. Crowley, Hatchet’s soon-to-be horror icon, is no different. In fact the character shares such blatant parallels with the likes of Voorhees, Leatherface, Kruger and The Burning’s ‘Cropsy’ that he can hardly be considered original. All are deformed, clear examples of each character’s evil being externalised through visual means – think Bond villains; metal teeth, scars across the eyes etc – and all serve to exact some kind of revenge for their afflictions.
Crowley’s myth shares a particular resemblance to the story of Jason Voorhees. Crowley, born deformed, was taunted by the local kids due to his appearance. His father, who loved him despite his burden, cared for him and tried his best to shield him from the abuse of the other children. One Halloween, a group of trick-and-treaters tried to scare Crowley out of his shed deep in the swamps of Louisiana, but the prank backfired – the shed caught fire with Crowley trapped inside. His father, upon his return, tried frantically to get him out, eventually resorting to using a hatchet to break in and save his son. Unaware that his son’s face was pressed up against the inside of the door the father hacked away, resulting in Crowley’s death. But they say that if you go near the old Crowley house, deep in the thick of the swamp, you can still hear Victor Crowley crying out for his father. When a group of tourists, some of which have hidden agendas, find themselves stranded whilst on a haunted swamp tour, they realise that there is truth to the myth and very little chance of escape.
So just how does Hatchet manage to breath life into the slasher film? The narrative is formulaic, relying on well established themes and stylistically it does nothing new. Perhaps one thing should be made clear; Hatchet is not responsible for reinventing anything. The slasher sub-genre, perhaps more than any other, relies on a set of well versed conventions and Green, keen to give the die hard horror fans what they want, sticks to these stringently. To talk of Green as the saviour of horror would be unwarranted, I actually think that this film could have been made by anyone with an interest in the genre. What Green has done, albeit with conviction and competency, is make a film that was guaranteed to be well received providing that it reached the right audience and given that horror is possibly one of the simplest genres to successfully market, those who put up the money will have been fairly certain of recouping their investment.
Narratively, Hatchet is everything that we have come to expect from the genre. There are no high concept ideals or labyrinthine subplots; the film essentially revolves around a one dimensional plot with the intermittent deaths acting as gruesome set pieces. The question of whether the onscreen events are plausible rarely enters into the equation – what this film needed to deliver, and does, is an impressive body count and not much else. Green’s script work is impressive, switching between light-hearted comedy and no-holds-barred terror often quite whimsically. Green feeds his audience this rich vein of comedy throughout the film, making the expositional scenes seem less tedious and more enjoyable. When the heads start to roll (both figuratively and literally) Hatchet comes across as a well rounded exercise rather than seeming flimsy and disjointed.
Where Green really shines is in delivering the all important sucker punches that the audience love to hate. Crowley’s introduction is a prime example of this; a breakneck shot reverse shot places our unfortunate throng at the bottom of a hill, on top of which lies Crowley’s eerily lit and seemingly derelict shed. An agonisingly slow SteadiCam shot creeps up the slope, switching perspectives from higher to lower ground as the group makes slow progress. After what seems like forever, Crowley bursts through the doorway of his hut, charging down the slope towards the foremost members of the group whilst wielding his hatchet. In an instant Crowley goes from fabrication to fact and it takes him seconds to begin his killing spree. Crowley is light years away from the methodical Michael Myers, as soon as he arrives on the screen the pace of the film lifts, buoyed by the monster’s energy and kineticism. Whereas Myers stalks, Crowley is more comparable to Leatherface; both are a relentless force of evil, lacking direction and restraint.
On an aesthetic level, Hatchet is hard to fault despite never wowing the viewer with slick camerawork. There are no grand establishing shots or any real aspects of cinematographical brilliance; one assumes that the modest budget left little room for experimentation. The fact that the film is set almost entirely at night does well to mask the shortcomings presented by the budget restrictions. The lighting is sparse at times and the intermittent rain appears to be sketchy in widely framed shots but such shortcomings can be forgiven; the overall look of the film is unharmed. If anything, the low-fi aspect of the film is charming. The slasher sub-genre worked through its golden era without any of its flagship films exceeding 2 million dollars in production costs and I have never come across an article criticising the classics because of this.
Of course the most obvious aesthetic element is the film’s special effects, all of which were shot in-camera, in keeping with the old school ethos that the film proudly heralds. Given the advancements in make up and special effects since the heyday of the slasher movie, the effects in Hatchet are equally as impressive as anything that the godfather of gore Tom Savini came up with in the 70’s and 80’s. John Carl Buechler, who has previously worked with both Freddy and Jason, really delivers on this film, which goes the extra mile in terms of blood and guts. The elaborate and memorable deaths in Hatchet easily match those of Halloween, Friday the 13th and the Nightmare on Elm Street films – even surpassing them in terms of inventiveness. Crowley’s most effective weapon, aside from his eponymous hatchet, seems to be his brute strength which he uses to horrifying effect numerous times. His first post-Englund victim is hacked in two from the shoulder down through the torso, his second has her head pulled apart from the jaw upwards, leaving her tongue waggling sickeningly in the air. It’s not so much that these incredibly violent deaths look real but more that their graphic nature renders any notion of realism irrelevant.
Unnerving as it is, the death scenes really are the film’s triumph. After all, what is a slasher film without them? Horror fans will relish the back to basics approach of the film’s special effects team in the face of Hollywood’s CGI fixation and whilst the weak stomached will disagree, there is a grotesque beauty to be admired when considering the amount of craftsmanship that has gone into the execution of each demise. More importantly, the special effects of Hatchet hark back to a time when things couldn’t be achieved with a computer and the crew had to work extensively to achieve the image that they had in their heads. Hatchet captures this artisan mentality perfectly and the film is much better off for it.
One thing that gains Green points is his bypass of the ‘final girl’ convention, which despite being the widely accepted mode of closure in the genre has now undoubtedly grown stale. One of the drawbacks of such generic material is the ease with which the audience can guess exactly what is coming next and when the film is going to end. Traditionally, when the cast is cut down to the last person, and she is female, it’s game over. This is perhaps the only area that Green sees fit to leave uncovered, instead playing out the film with one last obligatory scare that many won’t see coming. If not exactly refreshing, the ending is certainly welcome and it alludes to the fact that true horror fans are hardly concerned with closure. What some would regard as leaving the cinema with a bad taste in their mouths is exactly the opposite for the target audience of this film.
Hatchet may be an exercise in nostalgia, but few could argue that it came at the right time. The cycle of the slasher film came to an end because its formula was being abused, resulting in films that were unworthy of being mentioned in the same category as the classics. Green took it upon himself to pay homage to the films that we all remember from our youths and for that alone he should be praised. The fact that he has delivered a feature which is arguably on a par with the films that it aspires to be is a magnificent achievement for the young director. If Hatchet had been made in the golden age we would be lauding it as one of the greats; it is almost a shame that it missed the boat by 30 years.
A magnificent double death scene can be found here.
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