Writer's Block Review: "Hatchet" (2006/07)

 To help me break with some writer’s block I have been suffering from since the large amount of writing I did for my finals in the middle of May, I am going back to basics.  You might be saying, “you haven’t updated this blog in months.”  To which I must replay, “yeah, I had other shit going on.” 

A large amount of this blog is just me writing about movies I have seen.  For a time I would rank/review all the movies I had seen from a given year.  I stopped emphasizing movies for whatever reason and now my brain is tired from thinking bigger thoughts about the world and suffering and how people in power know exactly how to fix it all, but they don’t.

Today I am going to write on here something simple, much like how I started simple when I went back to the gym following Covid.

Hatchet (2006/2007)

Written and Directed by Adam Green

Currently available on Amazon Prime.

The Premise

A boat tour of character actors sinks in the swamp near a haunted(?) cabin and the various colorful characters are killed off in gruesome fashion by the deformed revenant that stalks the marshland.

The Good

While not everyone in the movie is a great actor even that kind of works as it is more of a comedy.  The dialogue is frequently good, with quips and acting beats making it feel true to the various characters in the movie.  There is really no conversation or line that feels like the wrong person is talking.

The make up and gore effects capture the goofy tone that the dialogue does, and it all fits together quite well.  They go for over the top and a few of them shoot the moon.

Maybe I am shallow in that I consider the presence of Mercedes McNab to be a highlight.  She is gorgeous and has perhaps the best comedic timing one could hope for in a bimbo character.  I loved her as Harmony on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and here she is elevating the dumb bimbo role to an artform.

I am not going to call out all the actors or the cameos/small roles for horror icons, but they all work well enough for this movie.  Just some are better than others.

The Bad

I am glad they leaned in on the comedy.  Holy hell is this one of the most derivative outlines o a script you can get.  This is exactly the sort of cliché riddled movie that “Cabin in the Woods” was mercilessly mocking and if they had tried to play it completely straight it would have been complete garbage.

Bigger issues come with the shoestring budget, as Saturday Night Live has more convincing swamp sets.  Worse for the horror side of the story, everything is lit to a comical level… At one point they find a flashlight and its beam is completely drown out by the lighting they just have as the default.  Keep in mind this is supposed to be night, in a foggy swamp, it should be dark as hell.  I can’t help but imagine how you could light the woods in a way that makes it visually interesting without completely breaking the conceit, but you would need a lighting guy who costs money and they don’t have any of that.

As far as acting, unfortunately the worst performance is the movie’s final girl, played by Tamara Feldman.  She is playing this role way too straight and comes off like someone from a more serious iteration of this material who got lost.  Bad direction?  Maybe she just wasn’t into it because she did not reprise the role for the sequel.  Either way it is the weakest acting on the character with perhaps the 2^nd or 3^rd most screen time.

My biggest issue is with the ending, which I guess will be a spoiled here.  The ending feels like a cheat on the characters.  They are clever earlier in the movie trying to concoct a plan that played on what they knew about the monster’s origins, “let’s light him on fire, because his tragic death involved him trying to escape a burning cabin” and their plan is foiled by rain.  This plan is good.  And how it is foiled is also good.  That should have been the climax and ending of the movie, but that is instead the end of act two.

The ending comes when the characters have a protracted chase thru a graveyard and seemingly defeat the monster by stabbing it in the face.  Stabbing in the face is not any more effective than the myriad of other bullets, stabbings, and other harm they have visited upon the monster and yet they think they beat it.  The characters are surprised when the monster shows back up and ostensibly kills the remaining characters.  Downer ending, perfectly fine for this kind of movie.  BUT, that feels like a betrayal of the characters who were previously shown to at least be trying to get a handle on things.

To fix this I would have moved the chase scene to act 2, the characters realize they can’t get away after being chased in a circle back to the haunted cabin.  They then try to use the fire plan on the monster back at the haunted cabin, and then their plan is foiled and they all die.  Ramp up the character’s knowledge and insight in how to fight the monster as time goes on, make the audience feel like the characters are going thru an arc.  Currently their knowledge goes up and then crashes down.

For an example of how to do this well I have to point to the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie.  Nancy forms a plan on how to defeat Freddy Krueger by pulling him out of the dream world and into her house full of traps, it ostensibly works… but the twist ending shows that Freddy was not actually defeated and the characters die.  “Elm Street” ramped up to the twist ending, it felt like a surprise and it doesn’t feel like the characters failed to try everything they could.

The ending kind of ties into one more issue, there is no character arc.  You usually want to show your protagonists dealing with some kind of trauma or weakness over the course of the narrative, and by overcoming the weakness they help to overcome the monster.  In this instance the main character is dealing with a breakup from a previous relationship and the final girl is trying to investigate what happened to her brother and father.  Logically, neither of these tie into fighting a revenant… The best I could think is that during some key moment the Final Girl’s father and brother could rise up as revenants to try and help her escape?  And logically the main guy getting over his breakup by getting with the final girl would be the other side of things, you would have to establish that she left him because he was not a take-charge kind of guy and by the end of the movie he is a take-charge kind of guy.  Just… Something.

 

Conclusion

I don’t hate this movie, it is watchable.  The humor elevates in enough that the derivative elements and low production values are mostly forgiven.  I can’t help but wonder if they could have done something more creative with the backstory?  Maybe if they had the budget to make the presentation of the setting actually scary?

It is strange that one of my oldest movie reviews on this blog is for “Phantasm” which was similarly low budget but was far more creative with the premise… and I still like this one more because the acting and dialogue is better.  Maybe give Adam Green some money to work with so that he can escape the horror-ghetto his career seems to be in and see what he could do with something bigger and stranger?  I could see him  doing episodes of “Creepshow” or other horror anthology series without breaking a sweat.

This is not the first movie by Adam Green I have seen. “Digging up the Marrow”, which is sort of a cross between a mockumentary and the movie “Nightbreed” was, and it is better than “Hatchet”… and better than “Nightbreed”.

(Sidenote on “Phantasm”, I no longer consider it the worst movie I have ever seen by a long shot.  That title went to “Boyhood”.)

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Movies 2014, "The Signal"

            I already did my science fiction reviews, but managed to watch this one from Redbox and I hated it so much that I am going to give a massive in depth run down of it.  Because much like "Prometheus" it is a movie that sucks in a very interesting way.  Building expertly to a climax that fails completely and leaves you terribly disappointed.  I had high hopes for this movie because the trailer is fantastic.

The Signal

            (This is all SPOILERS, but it will also tell you why not to watch it.  If you like cryptic bullshit, by all means go see it.  But I would say reading my rundown here and then watching the movie might be even more fulfilling, because you will be able to see my issues with the movie as you go along).

            This might be the most disappointing film I saw all year (and it is the movie I am editing this blog for).  This is yet another movie in the tradition of Damon Lindelof in which striking images, iconography, and intentional obtuseness serve as stand ins for plot and theme.

            What I liked, I actually find that they played to their strengths in a lot of ways, special effects cost money, so most of the mundane sets are intentionally boring and out of date, most of this movie looks like it was filmed in a high school that was out on summer break.  The effects look really good and are only seen often enough to remind you of their existence and relation to the "plot", meaning that they do not wear out their welcome and their appearance still looks cool and mysterious.  I like that the main character is smart, inventive, and not invincible, he seems like a good guy in a hard situation and displays real worry about his friends while also displaying a drive to save them and himself.  Laurence Fishburne is well cast as the cryptic authority figure, a role he has exemplified ever since first encapsulating everything about that character arc type with Cowboy Curtis on "Pee Wee's Playhouse".

"Welcome to the desert of the real," considering how much of the movie takes place in a desert that like is very one the nose.

            Now what I did not like: 1) The "plot".  And I will use quotation marks every time I refer to it as such.  This movie starts with a pair of hackers going on a road trip to take one of them's girlfriend to her new college on the other side of the country, both of the hackers have physical limitations, one has thick glasses and is spindly, the main character uses crutches.

            This set up is easily a pitch for a movie on its own, you could have the characters use hacking skills to steal money, the girlfriend could explain why she is moving away because the main character's condition is worsening and she lacks the emotional strength to be with him... there is a lot of room for interesting stuff without any science fiction entering the picture.  But the real "plot" is that the two hackers are going to make a detour to meet a rival hacker named Nomad that they have been in a dick measuring contest with, really they are hunting down this figure to a remote shack in the desert... Yeah nothing bad could happen here.  For some reason the movie switches to found footage style for this sequence, like something out of "V/H/S", it is a strange choice.  Anyway, they are abducted by aliens.

It happens.  People get abducted.  No reason to be a little pussy about it.

          Now overall the movie has been a little slow, but there is still a lot of exciting things happening.  The mystery and character moments are spaced out enough that the boring parts feel like build up (they aren't) and the twists are just twisty enough to keep you interested.  But then it all starts going to hell.

            The main character wakes up in a lab surrounded by scientists in hazmat gear.  They run tests on him and the strangely low tech aspect of the facility is highlighted, "With all our technology, it is strange that something so crude as a pen still has its place."  (That quote hung with me, but is not on the imdb page.)  Again, good mystery.  But stuff keeps getting introduced, somewhere in the facility there is some kind of monster, which never shown on screen, just claw marks in the walls... and it is never seen in the movie or referenced again... Massive red herring or just a dropped "plot" point?  The Main character hears his friend's voice thru the ventilation system... And then he doesn't, and is told he never did... is he going crazy, are they lying, another dropped "plot" point?  These parts of the movie are never brought up again and lead to nothing.

            Eventually he rescues himself and his girlfriend... Learning that he and the other hacker have had cybernetics bolted onto them.  The both with crutches now has mechanized legs that allow him to Sparta kick people to death.  And the kid with the weak eyes, he must have some kind of Geordi visor right?  No he got cybernetic hands... But is still blind without his glasses?  Was it too much trouble to have his disability match his implant?  (And really having the Visor would have made more sense because he is the one who sees thru the fake surroundings... It is called a metaphor).

            Then we enter the strangest part of the movie, the wandering around interacting with crazy people in a remote desert area.  There is a woman with a Christ fixation, and a violent trucker... Why they are crazy is never explained... Does the main character have some kind of disease from the aliens causing people to go mad, are these people part of some kind of experiment?  It is never answered and later in the movie they are seen ultra-crazy and Laurence Fishburne has to shoot them in the face.... SOMETHING WHICH MAKES NO SENSE WHEN THE ULTIMATE REVELATION ABOUT THE MOVIE IS REVEALED.

            Eventually the main character, the girlfriend, and the other friend all meet up and use a truck to try and escape, having found out that everything they have encountered is just an elaborate fake, a set.  All of the milk containers, cans, and other items are empty.  And the maps they find don't line up to anything.  WHERE ARE THEY?  There is also a mysterious series of numbers (Hello Damon Lindelof's "LOST") but at the very least the numbers are explained... 41:2:3:5 which all add up to 51.  They are in area 51.  Which would have been cute if this movie were made in 1980, but since Area 51 has been mostly declassified as a research station for experimental aircraft, and pictures of it exist online the movie just seems silly and out of touch, like a shittier episode of the "X-Files" (another series which kept throwing shit out to the audience and offering awful explanations).

Including the writers, who clearly had no idea where this was going.

            Thru out all this we keep flashing back to the main character being a runner and coming to a rushing river he can't cross, or times he fell in the mud.  I was expecting these scenes to pay off somehow, that he would come to a metaphorical river, or he would fall down and have to get up... But it doesn't pay off, and it is never talked about either.  He runs with the new cyber legs at super speed, but at no point is it explained what the flashbacks were about.  And then the movie's cinematography gets obnoxious, with slow motion of EVERYTHING.  Explosions, gun fights, characters making realizations, it makes the movie's most exciting science fiction action sequences into boring slogs as things are slowed to the point of stopping.  And the best friend with cyber arms is killed fighting waves of faceless and nameless soldiers.  Another problem with this movie, aside from Fishburne, no soldier or scientist talks to the characters... at all.  Maybe it is supposed to make them seem more hostile but really it just seems annoying.

            Finally there is a confrontation with Fishburne, whose name in this movie is DAMON, which when read backward is NOMAD!  MY GOD!  It's now all going to make sense....

Nope.  Still doesn't make any sense.

            Nothing is explained.  ONLY MORE QUESTIONS.  I do not want everything fed to me, I can make up my own explanations for things.  I am smart and have read a lot of genre fiction.  If you give me clues I can put things together... But this movie just keeps twisting things to the point of it not making sense.  The girlfriend is captured, we never learn if or what cyber augmentations she got... another dead end plot point.

            And with an army of soldiers and scientists telling him to surrender the main character charges up his legs like "Dragon Ball Z" and runs to a bridge to escape... He then crashes thru an invisible wall... the whole thing was a "Truman Show" like dome... and that is not all, IT IS ON A SPACE STATION ORBITING AN ALIEN WORLD.  And: FISHBURNE IS AN ANDROID.

            What does this mean?

            What are we supposed to take away from this?

            What is happening?

            No clue.

            The movie ends without telling you what anything is or the why.  Is it a zoo?  Is this the future?  Where are they?  Did the people earlier go nuts or were they just androids too?  And if they were androids, why shoot them to turn them off?  Was the girlfriend experimented on?  What about that monster in the lab?  Why did the lab have such out of date technology?  What was up with the flashbacks to the running?  Why were they lured to the desert?  Was it for their hacking abilities?  You could never stop asking questions.

Contrary to the clean appearance, this film is a god damn mess.  Am I alone in thinking this image implies time travel?  I thought maybe this movie was going to be a grown up and dark version of "Flight of the Navigator".  Go watch "Flight of the Navigator".

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 12

            I decided to do the 30 day movie challenge as a blog series as it ties into my blog activities rather easily and I am once again not blogging my usual series with regularity in spite of saying that I would.

            Today is "A Movie from an actor I Hate".  Let me put this clearly out there, this movie fails for a lot of reasons, and the main actor is merely the largest and most spectacular of those failures, but in addition it has plotting problems, internal logic problems, and so completely rips off the plot of "Total Recall" I want to call this movie borderline plagiarism.  The movie is "Johnny Mnemonic", the actor is Keanu Reeves.

Ice T is in this too, he runs a gang of urban poor freedom fighters, and since they share the same role as "Total Recall's" mutants, I'm guessing the face tattoos and goggles are to fill in for a lack of mutation make up in the budget.

            Don't watch this movie.  Ever.  Nothing in it works.  Giant cyborg priest assassin, comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere.  The ultimate weapon at the end of the film, a cyborg dolphin, and it is far dumber and more pathetic looking than it sounds.  There is a guy who has a cybernetic thumb, the nail of which can be pulled out to create a whip (there is a spool of magical wire that can cut through anything like a light saber wound up in his thumb).

            There is a scene in which the protagonist is confronted by two arch villains, one of which has two goons with him, when Johnny kills the arch villain with the goons... this is hard to explain, the orphaned goons start following the orders of the other arch villain without explanation.  That is like Hell's Angels bikers and a mafia hitman showing up to kill a loan shark, and when the loan shark kills the biker gang leader, all of the bikers just start talking orders from the Hitman.  There are scenes like that all over this movie, when people come and go and work together without any reason to.  You might think that the DVD is skipping, when in fact the only thing wrong with the movie is that is has a terrible movie on it.

Seriously, that thing to his immediate right, is a mother fucking cyborg dolphin.

            And what the hell else can be said about Keanu Reeves except that he is a black hole of talent.  No line ever said by this man wasn't done in a tone of self parody.  Reeves has been in two movies I have liked, "Constantine" and "The Matrix".  "Matrix" was good in spite of him, and "Constantine" was good in spite of him.  How does he keep getting work?

Let's forget for a second that the source material is as British as the Stamp Tax and just go with the idea of an American adaptation.  How wouldn't this movie have been better with Robert Downy Junior or Leonardo DiCaprio, or even the guy who played Hurley on "Lost", at least they have charisma and can read a line without ironic inflection creeping in.

            He has had work doing Shakespeare in a legitimate production.  A Kenneth Branagh production!  And even though Shakespeare has a cadence to the words in his scripts, all of that sounds like the clunk and clatter of broken instruments coming out of Reeves mouth.  And I include this to show the sheer broadness of his opportunities to do something other than suck, to do work that has dignity, and how constantly he has failed to do anything other than suck.  I hate him as an actor, and would prefer his movies to not exist than him to be allowed and paid to make more movies.

Not one line is said without an odd, off kilter tone somewhere in it.

 

            In my opinion, this is one of the worst movies I have ever scene, and Keanu is one of the worst actors I have ever watched.  Have you seen the trailer for "The Day the Earth Stood Still"?

I will never watch this peice of shit.