Hatchet review

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Billed as “Old School American horror”, Hatchet’s actually something far less classy: a technically inept homage to ’80s slasher movies that’s both bloody and bloody stupid. Sporting no frills but lots of insanely gory kills, it follows a bunch of Mardi Gras partygoers who head to the bayou for a haunted-swamp tour and end up being picked off by deformed killer Victor Crowley (Hodder). Newbie writer-director Adam Green chucks in lots of bare-nakedness, brainstorms deliberately dumb dialogue (“I’m gonna call the police, they’ll send the cops!”) and gets his SFX team to push the bloody envelope (most OTT moment: a woman’s screaming mouth torn open until her head breaks in two). The downside? Once you’ve seen three people’s arms ripped off by a hillbilly monster, you’ve seen ’em all…

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