Centered around the tragic legend of Victor Crowley, the original Hatchet was good, old-fashioned, slasher film fun, featuring a who’s who of horror film icons. Its sequel was more of the same but amped up a notch in the gore and kill count departments. The series has made writer/director Adam Green into a cult sensation, and it was no surprise that Hatchet III would be made.
What was surprising was Green turning over the reins to his baby, letting first-time director BJ McDonnell take a crack at it, much to the dismay of the Hatchet Army. McDonnell, Green’s cameraman on the first two films, wasn’t left out to dry with the film, though, as Green wrote the script himself and oversaw much of the production.
Picking up moments after the second film’s conclusion, Marybeth Dunstun (played by Danielle Harris) once again comes face to face with the Bayou Butcher, Victor Crowley. After a literal shower of blood is rained upon the screen, Marybeth escapes to town clutching the face of her haunting adversary and is quickly locked up on suspicion of murder. The police force head out to the swamp to investigate Marybeth’s claims and find it littered with bodies, including that of Victor Crowley himself. And anyone that has seen any slasher film knows what happens when you give the body of a monstrous killing machine to the medical examiner.
As expected, Hatchet III features buckets of blood and a body count that continues to rise over its short run time. And while the kills are less elaborate this time around, making it less entertaining in that respect, it attempts to make up for it by mocking what the series has become at nearly every turn. Where the original two films were modern takes on the classic slasher film formula, Hatchet III seems to be a modern take on the over-exposure of the slasher film formula. Sadly, it doesn’t work as intended.
The film is very aware that it is abundantly ridiculous and that the formula itself is abundantly ridiculous. The problem with that self awareness though is that characters consistently call out how stupid each decision being made is; in the end, everything still follows the same tired and bloated formula. And despite much of the dialogue being quite funny, it doesn’t make up for the fact that the film is on rails the entire time, ending up exactly where you expect it to.
For some reason, Adam Green has struggled to recapture the spark that made the original so enjoyable. He obviously has a great appreciation for the slasher sub-genre and should be applauded for creating such an elaborate mythology for his monster. But maybe that spark was a stroke of luck, and he should just bury the hatchet and move on to something new.
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