Hatchet is essentially a slasher film, a genre of horror films that was popular in the 1980s. Then came the 1990s, when the mania seemed to be dying, and by the early 2000s, the genre would have been nearly extinct if it hadn’t been for a few hits like Scream (1996) and Final Destination (2000).
A few excellent anthologies, on the other hand, could never provide something new and grounded to a dying genre unless they truly brought something new and grounded. That’s when filmmaker Adam Green came along and gave us Hatchet in 2006, a film that was both scary and amusing, proving that slasher films can be a lot of fun.
Hatchet’s over-the-top gore and multitude of killer one-liners made it a fan favourite. In the last 12 years, four Hatchet films have been released, all of which have earned mixed to positive reviews. Wes Craven and George A. Romero are among Green’s favourite filmmakers.
His fanboyish personality is reflected in his films, as well as his unique storytelling strategy of starting the following film exactly at the last frame of the previous picture, and his considerable usage of special effects rather than CGI. In all four films, Kane Hodder plays Victor Crowley, the evil guy.
Who Is Victor Crowley?
Victor Crowley’s story is tragic and terrifying in equal measure. He was the unlucky victim of another’s blunder. In the Honey Island Swamps of New Orleans, Thomas and Shyann Crowley lived in a modest house. Shyann, on the other hand, was dying of cancer, so the Crowleys hired a nurse named Lena to look after her.
Thomas and Lena became more intimate and planned to have sex. Lena eventually became pregnant. Thomas and Lena were so careless that they kissed on the day Shyann died, even though she hadn’t yet died.
She cursed Lena and her unborn child with rage and loathing before passing away. A few days later, Lena birthed her son, who was born with a neoplasm, also known as tumor disease, and she died presumably from the shock of the sight of her own baby.
Mr. Crowley was ashamed of what he had done and felt miserable at the sight of his son, who he named Victor. He would keep Victor hidden in the house, and the child grew into an adult in absolute seclusion, without any friends. However, as time passed, Thomas forgave himself and learned to love Victor.
Still, no secret can be kept forever, and the news of Victor and his diseased skin spread in the neighborhood. On a Halloween night, a group of young trick-or-treaters came prowling to the Crowley residence and started to taunt and bully Victor from outside the house.
They started throwing crackers and sparklers, and one of these was so close to the door that the door caught fire. However, Thomas reached the house just in time to save his son from the flames.
He got hold of a hatchet and began smashing the door, but he didn’t realize that his son, Victor, was scared to death and was sitting just by the door. Victor was struck in the face by Thomas Crowley’s swinging hatchet, and he appeared to die as a result of the blow.
Thomas was enraged because he had unintentionally killed his kid, and he went for the young lads for vengeance, despite their denials. Thomas Crowley succumbed to his anguish and remorse quite quickly.
But Victor Crowley wasn’t dead yet; he somehow revived only to become a serial murderer with low intelligence, great strength and supernatural traits. It is believed that Victor Crowley became mentally stuck in the night on which he died and has since been looking for his father, killing anyone who comes close to his house.
Up to now, Victor is known to have killed 64 people, including an unborn child. He has a psychopathic personality, but he once used to be a loving son. Victor’s father was his sole friend, and he was unable to cope with his bereavement.
The zombie man has the mental capability of a toddler, but he also possesses incredible strength: he can easily rip people’s limbs off. Victor is a revenant, or a spirit seeking vengeance, and he is almost eternal in this form. Victor is resurrected even after one of the characters, Marybeth Dunston, smashes his face to a pulp. Aside from that, he has enhanced senses, attentiveness, and endurance.
Hatchet (2006)
Sampson and his son Ainsley go out late at night to hunt alligators in a swamp, but they are attacked by a hideous creature. Several days later, while enjoying Mardi Gras, a group of pals decide to go on a haunted swamp tour.
Reverend Zombie typically leads the excursions, but due to a negligence claim filed against him, he had requested them to accompany an inexperienced tour guide named Shawn instead.
The friends meet other tourists, among whom are two girls Jenna and Misty, who love taking off their tops without any significant reason, a girl named Marybeth. Marybeth is actually Sampson’s daughter, and she has embarked on the journey with these people because an illegal tour was the only way to find her father and brother.
Shawn’s inexperience shows when the tour takes a wrong turn, causing the group’s boat to crash and start sinking. They evacuated the boat only to find that they were now standing right in front of the Crowley residence.
Marybeth tries to warn the others about the legend of Victor Crowley, but no one pays heed to her. Victor appears and kills Jim, dissecting him into two halves with his hatchet as the married couple Jim and Shannon Permatteo.
He then rushes after Shannon and rips her head apart, killing her. The tourists run, but Shapiro is separated from them, and Victor kills him by twisting his head and breaking his neck. Marybeth and Ben discover her family’s remains in the house, and Victor discovers them soon after.
He first mutilates Jenna’s face with a custom-made belt sander, and then severs Shawn’s leg with a shovel before decapitating him. He held Jenna and banged her face on the shovel that was standing upright from the ground. The others try to find weapons to stop the supernatural killer, and Ben comes across gasoline in the toolshed.
But Victor, having killed Misty, uses body parts as melee weapons against Ben. Ben manages to shower him with gasoline, and they set Victor on fire. Unfortunately, a sudden rain extinguished the flame, though the brief danger did give Marybeth, Ben and Marcus time to flee.
Pursuing them, Victor catches and pins down Ben, but Marybeth and Marcus manage to rescue him. Unfortunately, Victor gets hold of Marcus and tears his arms apart before smashing him to death.
Ben and Marybeth are later able to stop Victor, impaling him on a pole. However, Victor, not yet out for the count, kills Ben and proceeds to lure Marybeth to the water with Ben’s severed arm.
Despite the fact that the picture was released in 2006, it has all of the hallmarks of 1980s gorefests. The picture succeeds because to its heightened humour, which contrasts with the horror, decapitations, blood, and ripped limbs.
Hatchet isn’t nauseating despite having a lot of body horror because there are a lot of hilarious moments and even a couple scenes with topless women. You might be shocked to learn that writer and director Adam Green avoided using CGI in the picture, except when it was required to erase on-screen wiring and camera sightings.
Hatchet II (2010)
Victor attacks Marybeth in the sequel to the previous film, which picks off where the first left off. She tries to flee and is rescued by Jack Cracker, who whisks her away to his cabin.
He requests Marybeth to leave after learning her last name, telling her that only reverend Zombie can help her. He then starts watching a film he discovered in the swamp, but is ambushed by Victor while doing so. Jack’s guts are pulled out and strangled by the villain until he is entirely severed.
Meanwhile, Marybeth arrives at Zombie’s business and informs him of the incident. He reveals some starting information to Marybeth: that her father was one of the boys who went to the Crowley residence the day Victor died.
Marybeth tells Zombie that she wants to go back and retrieve the remains of her brother and father, and he agrees to her wishes, gathering a group of hunters, including,amongst others, Shawn’s brother Justin, Marybeth’s uncle Bob, and one Trent Graves, whom Zombie pays $10000 to the venture.
As the group look for Crowley’s house, Zombie explains that it was Bob, Trent, and Marybeth’s father who started the fire all those years ago. According to him, Crowley’s soul would be able to rest in peace if he kills Trent and Bob. Meanwhile, Victor starts piling up bodies, or well… the body parts, of the hunting party.
One is killed by impaling his face with his hatchet, while another is mutilated by the boat propeller. When Victor discovered two of the hunters having sex, he proceeded to decapitate one and slice the other with his trusty axe. Another two were chainsawed and sent to God.
Victor then enters the cabin and attacks the remaining four characters, though Zombie is able to drag Marybeth out and close the door. Victor assassinates Bob, Trent, and Justin on the inside. Marybeth confesses that Bob was merely his father’s best friend and not her true uncle.
They conclude that Victor’s soul didn’t get the revenge it needed, and must be still around them. Victor approaches and rips out Zombie’s spine. However, Marybeth strikes Victor’s face with his own hatchet and he falls to the ground.
She continues to swing the hatchet until his face turns into a bloody pulp, at which point she shoots him in the head with a shotgun. The film ends with Victor’s possible death.
One might expect a great deal of blood and guts from a slasher film like Hatchet II, but writer and director Green elevates the fun by refusing to limit the sequel. It’s not just a gorefest for gorehounds.
We’re not implying that the violence is tame; rather, what makes this film unique is that the violence and gore are of exceptional quality, well-crafted, and nothing feels forced or out of place. The humor from the first film has been retained, just like the plot, which carries on seamlessly from the events of the 2006 film.
Hatchet III (2013)
After shooting Victor, Marybeth leaves and discovers the crew’s mutilated remains at the start of the third film. Victor’s snarling voice can be heard coming from the woods, and he attacks her. Victor’s body is sliced in half after Marybeth pushes him with her chainsaw.
She then travels to the Jefferson Parish Police Department, where Sherrif Fowler accuses her of being responsible for the deaths of the tourist group and the hunting party. Despite her repeated accounts of her tragedy over the previous few days, no one believes her—at least not everyone save the Sheriff’s wife, Amanda.
She tells Marybeth that it was her father’s idea to set the house on fire many years before, and he had intended to calm Victor’s soul by giving him Thomas Crowley’s ashes, but he was not able to complete this mission. Since Marybeth is the last living survivor of the family, only she can complete her father’s unfinished task and put an end to the Victor Crowley problem.
Meanwhile, the Sheriff heads to the swamp with paramedics and the first responders. They bag Victor’s body and take him on board an ambulance boat. However, Victor comes to life once again and mutilates most of the cops and paramedics.
The huge number of deaths at the swamp has not gone unnoticed, and the government send a SWAT team of five men and one woman, led by Tyler Hawes, to deal with the killer. However, even the SWAT team is no match for Crowley, who kills everyone except Hawes and the female member of the team,Dougherty.
Victor pins Hawes to the ground and pulls his head and spine out later. In the midst of the chaos, a deputy called Schneiderman shoots a rocket at Crowley, but it misses and lands on one of their own. The explosion causes the home to collapse, burying Crowley for a short while under the wreckage.
The survivors flee for their life as Crowley rises from the rubble and killsSchneiderman. Meanwhile, Amanda and Marybeth go to a distant cousin named Abbott MacMullen to fetch Mr. Crowley’s ashes. Back at the swamp, Crowley chases the Sheriff, Andrew, and Dougherty, cornering them by the ambulance boat.
The Sherrif makes a call requesting the National Guard to come, lying about being attacked by crazy gunmen. Amanda and Marybeth arrive at the site, forcing the Sheriff to try and leave, but Crowley beheads him. Finally, after much struggle, Marybeth manages to spread Thomas Crowley’s ashes on his son’s vengeful spirit.
Crowley begins to melt, and Marybeth shoots him, this time killing him for good. The film ends with the arrival of the National Guard, but the audience is left to wonder if Marybeth will survive or succumb to her injuries. The only definite survivor of the massacre is Andrew, who remained hidden from Crowley’s eyes.
BJ McDonnell took up the directing duties from Adam Green, despite the fact that the storey was still written by him. On the screen, the shift in directorial approach was obvious. McDonnell wanted for the film to be a full-fledged action film with horror elements thrown in.
Cops, SWAT teams, rockets, and the National Guard are featured throughout almost the entire film. The way critics regarded the Hatchet series changed as a result of this. While critics panned the picture for its excessive gore and brutality, moviegoers had varied feelings about it.
Hatchet 4: Victor Crowley (2017)
Unlike the first three films, which pick up just where the last one left off, making the various instalments feel like one big episode, this fourth instalment takes place a few years after the events of the third.
Andrew has become a celebrity and has published a book about his experiences at Honey Island Swamp, where he hid from Crowley. He appears on The Sabrina Show, which is hosted by his ex-wife Sabrina.
Meanwhile, Chloe, Alex, and Rose are planning to make a B-movie on Victor Crowley and have enlisted Andrew’s assistance in filming a trailer. Andrew, his manager Kathleen, Sabrina and her crew consisting of Austin, Casey, Jay and Zach leave on a chartered plane, but as fate would have it, their plane crashes in Honey Island Swamp, and their worst nightmare comes to life when they hear the growling voice of the infamous murderer.
In this film, Crowley comes back to life, possiblybecause Rose’s phone was constantly playing a video in which Reverend Zombie was reciting a voodoo curse that had the power to resurrect.
Crowley’s first victim is Alex, who he kills with a claw hammer. Next, he chases Chloe and smashes her head against the plane’s window. However, he doesn’t kill her, keeping her alive as bait. Clearly, the version of the villain we see here has grown a bit more intelligent since the previous films.
Kathleen begins to panic and attempts to leave the plane, and as Austin tries to stop her, he is beheaded.Crowley also thwarts Kathleen’s attempts to call the police, slashing off her arms, and he goes on to sink the plane, drowning Casey and her unborn child.
In the end, the swamp tour guide hired by the filming crew acts heroically, jumping with Crowley into a turbine. His and Crowley’s blood splatter Rose and Andrew.
The film is outrageously funny and expertly put together. Adam Green was rehired as director, and he took the film to new heights.
Future Of The Hatchet Franchise!
In the mid-credit scene, we see Marybeth Dunston watch the news report of the latest incident at the swamp, knowing that she must once again take on her old enemy.
This sequence gave us optimism that a sequel to Hatchet is in the works, but a mid-credit or post-credit scene isn’t usually indicative of a sequel. Adam Green acknowledged the existence of a sequel in an interview, calling it a “safe bet.”
Fortunately for us, Green is a storyteller who employs sequels to further the plot, and he does it with the same zeal as he did with the first. Green likes to wait for a few years between eachinstallment, proceeding when everyone working is fit to come back.
His conformationof another sequel came in May last year, and now that the pandemic has started to ease up a bit, we expect filming to start anytime this year or early next year.