Enough blood to give Count Dracula indigestion!
What a messy film indeed. A fun messy film though, with everything taken to extremes, but, would we have it any other way? I recently reviewed Axe Giant – The Wrath of Paul Bunyan and this hack-and-slash gore flick is very alike in a lot of ways, and while this looks to have had a bigger budget, it wasn’t half as good as far as I’m concerned. This is the directorial debut of BJ McDonnell, who has a huge amount of film credits for his camera work, on a lot of well known movies, but does he have something new to bring to the table? I think he may well do, because when you compare Hatchet III to the others in the series, this is arguably the best put-together flick of them so far. It doesn’t try to be great but there are enough improvements over the others to place this a bit higher and make it appear infinitely better.
*****
After thinking she killed the big hatchet-swinging monster, Marybeth (Scream-Queen Danielle Harris, Devils Night),goes to a police station but is now under arrest in a cell. Officers go out to investigate her story, but, when they run into trouble, the sheriff and his men go out to the haunted swamp to find out what happened. They meet a search-and-recovery team at the swamp, and together they find themselves being slaughtered in all manner of nasty ways, with brains and eyeballs a flying.
Danielle Harris does an awful lot of these horrors with some being more successful than others, but she’s been acting a long time. So long, in fact, she was in a few of the original Halloween franchise and then later in the remake! Danielle also looks great for her age as you would never know she was born in 1977, and still gets to play a teenager in a lot of her movies. Long may it last Danielle!
Ok, so Hatchet III hasn’t been based on a literary classic (certainly none I ever read!), but, this bloodthirsty flick is all about having fun at the expense of others funny misfortunes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
Not brilliant but it has its moments and was pretty much fun to sit through.
Grade: C+
Review by Ed Blackadder, Lead Entertainment Writer
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