Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Oh… okay. So Victor Crowley is a Black guy huh? This is how that’s going down Adam? What exactly are you trying to say here? I mean if Victor Crowley is a brother it sure didn’t help that guy in the first movie. You know, the kid that used to be on ‘The Cosby Show’? That was Black on Black crime like a mother fucker. And Vic sure wasn’t looking out for a brother in this movie ‘Hatchet II’, just ask The Candyman or either bloody half of Mr. Obnoxious Negro over there. But alas this movie isn’t about Victor Crowley’s lack of a social consciousness, and considering it’s a ‘Hatchet’ movie it’s really isn’t about much of anything other than giving the highly gifted prosthetic special effects team in this movie a workout. Not surprisingly, it does this thing very well.

Victor Crowley really did a number on Final Girl Marybeth (Tamara Feldman) in the last movie. He messed that girl up so badly that now she’s like six inches shorter and not quite as hot but Marybeth (Danielle Harris) has had her rack fill out a little more. When a movie monster can do all of that, this movie monster is one bad son of a bitch. Picking up where we left off in the last movie, Marybeth barely escapes the carnage of Victor Crowley by the skin of her teeth with the help of a kind swamp fisherman who will regret helping this girl. First kill logged.

Before this cat exits the planet he advises Marybeth to talk to the strange Dr. Voodoo (Tony Todd) who we remember from the first movie. Hmmm… somebody just informed me his name was Reverend Zombie and not Dr. Voodoo. My apologies. Reverend Zombie has critical information concerning Victor Crowley and he fills out the story that was started in the last movie and now we know that Victor’s old man (Kane Hodder) was doing his wife’s Black nurse while this wife was dying and this pissed off the dying wife who put a curse on her unborn child. All of this rigmarole and verbiage is just filler because all director Adam Greene really wants to do is get a bunch of people back in the swamp so that Victor Crowley can eviscerate them. We’re not going to get into how this happens, but now there are about a dozen or so hunters in the

swamp which includes among others Marybeth, Reverend Voodoo, a really obnoxious Black Guy and a hot chick. When you see the hot chick you know at some point she has to show us her tits, and I didn’t know how exactly they were going to pull that off considering these people are traipsing around in a swamp at night running from a crazed supernatural maniac, but they pulled it off. Impressive.

There’s not much else to say except to sit back and watch kills 2 through 11 with each kill being uniquely different from the one before it.

I enjoyed the first ‘Hatchet’, thinking it to be a nice little throwback, gore filled horror movie, and I liked this one too considering that I feel it’s a complete success in what it set out to accomplish, but to be honest with you it’s really barely a movie. I mean it does have a beginning, middle and an end like most movies do but if ever there was a set of plot points so terribly insignificant to what a movie is about, ‘Hatchet II’ is the ultimate example of that movie.

Does it really matter that Marybeth is a completely different actress this time around? Not in this movie it doesn’t because all we need here is warm body that can run and scream and Danielle Harris is pretty good at doing that. Does it make any kind of sense for some hot chick to want to have sex in the middle of swamp? Of course it doesn’t. You may wonder where Victor Crowley got all those awesome power tools he possesses. Did he walk into town and stroll into the local Home Depot to buy this stuff? And where does he get gas or electricity to juice these awesome tools he has? These, and more, are questions you might ask, but that would be plum silly now wouldn’t it?

The only questions one should rightfully ask before stepping into a ‘Hatchet’ flick should be along the lines of ‘Does anyone get split in half from the nutsack up’? ‘How many people get decapitated?’ ‘Does anyone get a power tool taken to their brain?’ ‘Does anybody get the front of their face shaved off?’ ‘Is there somebody in this movie that gets their mandible forcibly removed from the base of their skull?’ Those are the questions you need to ask, and the answer to all of those questions, and more, is a resounding yes.

Cinematically speaking ‘Hatchet II’ probably isn’t most comprehensible movie around and it really isn’t all that scary either for that matter, but it is one of the most bloodily violent movies around. And I think that was the point. Point well taken.