Hatchet II (2010)

via here

I don't know how clear I've made it that I don't like horror movies. 

In the past, I've generally only go to see one per year at the cinema and waited for any other suitably hyper ones on DVD. This predominantly is because I'm a massive control freak. I have no problem with losing control when i generally know what to expect but with horror, the whole deal is being frightened and I suppose I don't get why I'd want to be frightened.
But my fear on this occasion was overruled by my facination of censorship. One of the most interesting things I read on the Internet last year was an interview with Adam Green, on the distribution and censorship issues he came up against with his movie, Hatchet II. It was given the prohibitive NC-17 by the MPAA and couldn't have that decision overturned. NC-17 basically signifies something is pornographic - that your work has no artistic merit; it means cinema chains will not exhibit your film and WalMart won't stock it. Hatchet II doesn't have much sexual content, so that means they felt that it was violently pornographic, which MPAA do not do... ever. They are famously leinient on violence compared to their purience on sex.
Green couldn't see why they had given this rating- he had made a movie for adults which was certainly not for under 18's but he couldn't see why what he had done was any different to a million other horror movies and decided to take a stand and endeavour to release it with the NC-17 rating and luckly got one cinema chain to release it with them.
So when I saw that Hatchet II, was playing on a limited late night slot at my cinema - my curiosity took over and i decided to check it out. I've not seen the first Hatchet movie but that mattered not; i could tell immediately that it was starting directly after the last frames of the original film and it was very tense and scary as our heroine has gotten away from her aggressor and is talking to some wierd guy in a shack and you KNOW that this guy is going to be meat and every second we prolong this is just winding me up inside! But inbetween this, we see this short broad satire on the Girls Gone Wild videos which is pretty funny. Then comes the time for the murder of this crotchety geezer.... and it's one of the most gleefully over the top, stupid murders i've ever seen. This heralded, the moment when i understood what the tone of this film was going to be. Hatchet II is an excessively violent film but no more violent than a Looney Tunes cartoon if gorier but that gore is so schlocky, its dumb. There are moments when they cut away from the murder in progress and someone somewhere just throws a paint-can of blood on a wall or tree. It's less a scary movie with funny tension-defusing moments but a broad funny comedy with brutal decapitations. Supporters of the film say it's not excessively violent and that it's in context - I'll say it is excessive but that it's also contextual. The film is a funny cartoon, not a thriller trying to bother or upset anyone. I'm pleased to live in a country that passed the film with the yeoman-like lack of fuss and hyperbole that this film deserves. That's no diss to Adam Green, he's far more perceptive about violence than the MPAA give him credit for. If violence is pornographic, it would mean it anatomically realistic like a snuff-tape. Green's murders are so unrealistic, it becomes ludicrous and silly and the censors of one of the world's greatest democracies should know the difference...


I watched Hatchet II (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Source Code (2011)...