Total Film has just stumbled out of the world premiere of Adam Green’s splatterpunk slasher flick Hatchet 2 .
To be honest, as we stepped out of the screen and into the lobby of the Empire Leicester Square (where FrightFest has made its glorious return) we expected to find our clothes covered in blotches of blood, globs of gristle and spatters of spinal fluid.
Hatchet 2 wasn’t shot in 3D, but it might as well have been – the gore gushed all over the gleeful FrightFest faithful, who whooped, cheered and applauded every single one of the increasingly gruesome kills.
And their enthusiasm was justified. Far from suffering a sophomore slump, Hatchet 2 improves on the original so profoundly, you can barely believe it’s the work of the same director.
It may have been written in a week and shot in a month, but it certainly doesn’t show.
Green has clearly learnt lessons from his post- Hatchet work on flicks like Frozen and Spiral , and Hatchet 2 rattles along with the intensity and kill rate of a Grindhouse trailer.
With twice as many kills and – significantly – little of the fratboy humour that so tainted Hatchet, Hatchet 2 is easily the equal of the best of the post-VHS gore-sequels.
Kane Hodder should be proud of a double-performance (both in and out of make-up) which won’t win him any Oscars, but still sees him hold his own against fellow genre legends such as a – joyous – Tony Todd and a decent Danielle Harris.
Packed full of in-jokes and geek references – Frozen fans in particular will get a kick out of a great cameo – this is a film that, above all else, was made by film geeks, for film geeks.
And, it seems, soldiers. Green’s voice broke during a moving and passionate introduction to the flick as he regaled the tale of US soldiers stationed in Iraq who were able to escape the horrors of war by watching, well, the horrors of Hatchet the first.
Hopefully marines stationed in Afghanistan will feel the same about Hatchet 2 .
As will you, if you like your horror served up with buckets of gloopy blood.
Now, we're off to go and find a 24-hour dry cleaners. We'll see you for more FrightFest 2010 fun tomorrow.
To see Kane Hodder and Tony Todd talk about Hatchet 2, tell us what makes a good horror villain, and decide who would win in a fight between Candyman and Leprechaun, check out the video interviews below...
Kane Hodder Interview
Tony Todd Interview
