[knife_fight]

I really liked it. I wasn't expecting anything different (but I had been following it through numerous magazine/internet articles before I actually got round to seeing it). Right off the bat the movie lets you know what kind of movie it's going to be. The first 15 mins or so there are two amazing deaths and boobs galore, so proceeding from that, the audience should have known what to expect.

I don't think it was done "tongue-in-cheek" per se, it was just done like an 80's "bad" slasher flick (i.e. not scary at all to most people, ultra violent, lots of gratuitous nudity). I think the phrase "tongue in cheek" makes people think that Hatchet is somehow making fun of previous movies like that, which it is not.

I think it was just that a guy was like, "hey, no one makes those good ol fun 80s slashers anymore, so I'm gonna make one. except I'm gonna take the things I like about those movies, blood and tits, and exaggerate them... because that's what I like and I think there are other people out there like me."

Grindhouse definitely achieved the "old school" feel more effectively, but that's b/c they were trying to genuinely recreate those 42nd Street exploitation flicks. I think Hatchet was going more for a 80s-slasher-but-updated feel, rather than trying to straight up replicate the feel of the 80s movies that inspired it. Plus, Grindhouse had a badass budget where they could do all the tricks they needed to, to achieve their desired effect (the scratchy looking film stock, while a product of no-budget back in the day, actually costs a lot to imitate nowadays. kinda like how it costs more now to press a vinyl record than to burn a cd).

Hatchet is a cartoon. it's Yosemite Sam charging into a cannon and then getting shot out of it. it's just pure fun, which is what it was meant to be (imo).

so, in a nutshell, I loved it, but I wasn't expected the second coming of Halloween or anything.

(p.s. good to see ya round here E.C.) :)