When Hatchet begins in a swamp somewhere in the deep south, two alligator hunters (Robert Englund and Joshua Leonard) are going about their business when they're suddenly murdered. From there we cut to New Orleans where meet Ben (Joel David Moore) and Marcus (Deon Richmond), two young men who decide to leave the Mardi Gras festivities behind them and take a 'ghost tour.' They sign up for the tour and meet the rest of the participants: two aspiring actresses named Misty (Mercedes McNab) and Jenna (Joleigh Fioreavanti), a filmmaker named Shapiro (Joel Murry), a pair of average tourists named Mr. and Mrs. Permatteos (Richard Riehle and Patrika Darbo) and a shy girl named Mary Beth (Tamara Feldman). The tour leader, Shawn (Parry Shen), loads them all up on his boat and takes them into the swamps outside of town and the tour begins.

Soon enough, the boat and its crew run into trouble and the group find themselves lost and stuck in the middle of the deep, dark swamp. Mary Beth then tells the group about a local deformed maniac named Alexander Crowley (Kane Hodder) who may or may not have died in this very swamp years ago after a nasty fire. Of course, the group soon finds out that Mr. Crowley is alive and well and he hasn't put his axe murdering ways behind him.

Owing a huge debt to popular eighties backwoods slasher films like the Friday The 13th series, The Burning and Madman, Adam Green's Hatchet doesn't bring anything new to the slasher genre, but neither does it try to. It's made clear from the very start that this is an 'homage' to the film that inspired it and while it might have been nice to see some more creativity and effort put into the script, taken for what it is Hatchet turns out to be a lot of good, dumb fun. The film's biggest problem is that while the opening murder scene is a good way to get things started, from there we're hit with roughly thirty to forty minutes of sub-standard character development before we get to the good part. That said, once Crowley is out in the woods and doing his thing, the movie excels even if some awkward forced humor disrupts the tension now and again.

While the protagonists are almost completely disposable (they're little more than fodder for the Crowley character), Kane Hodder is excellent as the killer. His imposing physical presence brings an undeniable sense of menace to the part that, when coupled with the wonderfully splashy effects, ensure that the murder set pieces in the picture carry some impact. The effects are great - no CGI here, simply good old fashion latex and fake blood - and they literally steal the show. Green directs the film with enough style to ensure that it looks decent enough but doesn't go so over the top that the film looks too modern. The movie is goofy and has some pacing problems but the last half makes up for the complete lack of characterization and originality with gore galore and some fun jump scares. As made painfully clear by the UNRATED tag on the packaging, this cut of Hatchet has all the bloody bits intact. The effects done here are pretty effective and about as splattery as you can get with limbs ripped off of torsos, power tools used in interesting ways, a head split in two and more.

Video:

Anchor Bay gives Hatchet a pretty solid 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Color reproduction is quite strong, the reds in particular look nice and bright without ever looking too sickly or contrasty. Black levels are pretty solid and even the darker scenes have decent shadow detail. There aren't any problems with compression artifacts to complain about and there are only slight traces of edge enhancement. The film was made on a fairly low budget and at times this shows but by and large Anchor Bay have done a very nice job with the transfer for the film as it is clean, well authored and free of any major defects.