Hatchet 3

Starting right where part 2 left off, adorable and tiny scream queen Danielle Harris finishes off Jason-esque mass murderer Victor Crowley, then brings his scalp to the sheriff's office to prove he's dead. This gets her promptly arrested (in retrospect she probably should have just gone home), but the investigators digging through the previous evening's bloodbath unsurprisingly find that Crowley is back from the dead (yet again).

The original Hatchet's biggest problem was its bold claim advertising itself as "Old School American Horror." Which was a bunch of horseshit. When a film's opening credits involves the camera whipping around in fast forward to terrible industrial music to show you a bunch of crazy partying 20-somethings, it's pretty clear the film is going to have little in common with classic 70's and 80's slasher cinema outside of superficial details. No, instead it was an unserious, ironic horror/comedy that existed mainly as a delivery vehicle for outlandishly, hilariously disgusting gore.

Once you get past the false advertising, though, that's not a bad thing. The first 2 Hatchet films are dumb, unpretentious fun; a perfectly acceptable way to see some boobies and viscera while sharing drinks with a few acquaintances. And I'm happy to say that Hatchet 3 is exactly as good as the first two, and provides exactly what you'd expect. In fact, they are all more or less indistinguishable from each other.

The only real element of curiosity here is that parts 1 & 2 writer/director Adam Green only wrote and produced this time out, handing the directorial reins to series cameraman BJ McDonnell. Green made the excellent Frozen, but otherwise hasn't really distinguished himself as a filmmaker. And it holds true here because honestly I could not tell any way in which Hatchet 3 looked or felt different from its predecessors. I don't mean to say that McDonnell fails to put a unique stamp on the series so much as Green's template for the series is pretty generic and easily replicable.

That said, so what? With the Hatchet movies, you get a couple of laughs, some awesomely ridiculous deaths, and a reasonably likable cast. Some of us are just the kind of people who want to see Kane Hodder rip out Derek Mears's spine and skull through his stomach, and we'll be happy.

Rating: B-