Hatchet 3 Movie Review – Chunky Cajun Carnage
“Last I heard, was- was screaming coming from over there.” Hello, world wide web. I’m Decker Shado. “Hold your fire!” Tough crowd. Anyway, I’m Decker Shado, the internet personality with the best hair and with Jurassic January underway. Oh wait… with Friday the 13th just happening. It’s time to look at another video in the Hatchet franchise, which brings us to Hatchet 3. Why? Well, the big bad of Hatchet. Victor Crowley is, of course, played by none other than the man, the legend, Kane Hodder, possibly the most well-known actor to portray Jason Voorhees. And I need some reason
to go back to the series as this movie came out in 2013. And YouTube hates it when a video topic isn’t even remotely relevant. But what is Hatchet 3 all about? Not too surprising it continues the tale of Victor Crowley slaughtering helpless fools who wandered to Honey Island Swamp. This time, however, they think that with the help of some voodoo magic, they might be able to stop him for good, which is what they attempted last time. But this is a different voodoo spell, so may as well give it the old college try. So let’s take
a look at Hatchet 3 and see how that went. We pick up right where the last movie left off, and I’m going to have to work extra hard to edit
came off the set of an Evil Dead movie. So, yeah, it’s glorious, but I’m afraid I’m a little short of dolls at the moment. But yeah, like I said, Hatchet 2 ended with Marybeth, played by Danielle Harris, killing Victor Crowley, which isn’t going to work if we’re going to have a whole third movie. So he gets right back up, and before she knows it, they are locked in combat once again. Oh, well, that’s nothing you can’t solve with a motherfucking chainsaw! Man. This sure is fun to edit around, but it’s not like I could show
you that much of it even towards the end of this video as this movie was made with a no CGI rule. So all these over-the-top things happening, were done with beautiful practical effects. So if you think he looked dead before, he’s been stuffed through the business end of a Cuisinart at this point. Marybeth, in the meantime takes Victor’s scalp and heads down to the local police station carrying a shotgun covered in blood. Naturally, they don’t react all that positively to her appearance, and her repeating how she killed him is isn’t doing her any favors. So
she’s put in custody right quick. “Any injuries?” “No. Nothing noticeable sir.” “Are you trying to tell me that none of that blood is hers?” Well that doesn’t mean she went on a killing spree. She might have just accidentally done a marathon through a blood drive on the way here. They’re not taking any chances, though, tossing her in a cell all by her lonesome. So that Sheriff Fowler, played by Zach Galligan, can continue to question her story. Not only that, she swears several dozen people were killed, but not by her, by this Victor Crowley legend that
she just so happened to escape from nigh unscathed. But even more unbelievable after her father and brother went missing, she took a convenient illegal swamp tour. They all got killed. She found out her family was dead, so barely escaping. She just decided to go back the very next night. And even that entire hunting party got wiped out as well. Except for her. “That has to be the stupidest story and some of the most idiotic and contrived decision making I’ve ever heard.” Hey, Sheriff, leave the review to me. Would ya? He absolutely isn’t buying any of
this. She showed up to the station covered in blood and carrying a scalp, and nothing suggests what she’s saying is true. I mean, unless you count the fact that the police just went out to Honey Island Swamp and have come up with dozens of dead bodies. Hamilton, played by Jason Trost, reports that there are corpses and pieces of corpses everywhere and they haven’t been searched yet. This is just a welcome mat. So Fowler heads out to join them. And Deputy Winslow, played by Robert Diago DoQui “Fuck off.” Isn’t important yet, but he will be. Who
is important would be Sheriff Fowler’s ex-wife, Amanda, played by Caroline Williams. You might remember her as Loretta in Leprechaun 3. In that movie, they had her covered in tons of age makeup to try and pretend like she wasn’t hot, even though she was clearly still hot. And here she’s just, you know, actually older and still hot. But Amanda is a journalist whose reputation was trashed after she wrote a bit too much about the legend of Victor Crowley taking it super seriously. However, with that handy dandy police scanner, she overheard that bit about all those dead
bodies piled up in Honey Island Swamp. And she can’t wait to interview the suspect Fowler has in custody. “All we know is there’s a possible murder outside of Jefferson Parish. No further comment.” Piles of corpses in pieces? Maybe a murder. Maybe a tragic accident at the annual meeting of Woodchipper enthusiasts. So she’s not getting anything from him. But that doesn’t mean she can corner Deputy Winslow. Hey, how’s about that suspect? Could post her bail, or not. We’ll see. While that’s going on, we see that the paramedics have arrived at Honey Island Swamp and begin scraping
the victims off the landscape. This gives us a chance to introduce Andrew, played by Parry Shen. You know, Sean from Hatchet and Justin from Hatchet 2. Here he’s not playing a brother or cousin. He’s just still played by Parry Shen. He’s also worried about where they are. The lair of Victor Crowley. Not that anyone else believes that. Which brings us back to Amanda and how that article tanked her career. So a quick little interview with Marybeth could be just the thing to fix it. “You know, if I can prove that the ghost of Victor Crowley
actually exists, that would help me a lot.” We tried sending a ghost hunting crew out last year, but not only were they all killed, for some reason, they thought the best idea was to bring the worst quality video and audio equipment with them. Marybeth isn’t interested in chatting it up with a glorified blogger to help her career, so Amanda plays dirty, bringing up the Dunsten family and how her father is a drunk and her brother a degenerate and that there’s no way a judge wouldn’t use that against her and give her the death penalty. “I
couldn’t help but notice your pappy ain’t been here to see you must be happy hour somewhere.” They have happy hour in hell? Pointing out that her dad was also killed by Victor Crowley just works to excite Amanda even more. But that’s all she’s getting out of Marybeth for now. So we jump back to the Honey Island swamp. “Oh, shit. Where the fuck did this rain come from?” It’s the Gulf Coast. It’s either raining or so damn humid it might as well be. But look what they got here. A big damn corpse! Found him in pieces
by a giant chainsaw wearing nothing but overalls. This excites the hell out of Randy, played by Sean Whalen. So he’s the first one to go onto the slab. Still, that’s not the weirdest thing Randy’s seen today. He tells Andrew about this Asian guy’s corpse they recovered earlier. “He looked kind of like you, man.” “Oh, what? Because I’m Asian?” “No, dude. Because you were-” “Yeah, I get it.” I just assume like the others, you’re also going to be a corpse before the credits roll. Oh, but Marybeth is talking. She explains that she absolutely dismembered Victor Crowley.
So, yeah, he’s dead. A better plan than what Reverend Zombie tried. He thought that letting Victor kill those responsible for his death would break the voodoo curse. But that’s stupid. Besides, Amanda interviewed a real voodoo priestess, so don’t worry if you haven’t seen the other hatchet movies yet, she could explain that Victor Crowley is a repeater cursed to return and relive his tragedy every night. Thus, it doesn’t matter if Marybeth turn him into Chunky Soup. He’s not dead until the curse is lifted. Therefore, that night, as Randy prepares to work on the remains of Victor
Crowley, he is shocked. As Victor blows his mind. “Randy? Freeze! Don’t move!” And now Victor just sounds like generic animal grunts. I’m pretty sure I heard that one used for bears before. That does make it hard to understand what’s going on. As Hamilton calls back in a panic as Crowley murders him. But Marybeth realizes Crowley is still alive, and Amanda reveals she knows the real, true and actual method for breaking the curse. Got to give him his father back because Marbeth is only living Dunston, the family that led to this curse, She has to be
the one to break it. “We’re going for a ride.” “Oh, hell no.” Yeah. The only way to survive this franchise seems to be being a random background character. The longer he spends in front of the camera, the more we can be sure he’s going to be in pieces before the end of the movie. Amanda tells him that he needs to help because he’s the only one who can, and they need to break the curse or else all his cop friends will be killed. Hearing them be slaughtered on the radio does encourage him to comply. Right
around the time we see that Fowler has reached the swamp along with the rest of his men. But while he’s in charge for about 30 seconds. We see the SWAT team has also arrived, run by Hawes, played by Derek Mears, you know, Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, the remake. More important characters include the rocket launcher wielding Crowley Believer Schneiderman, played by Cody Blue Snyder and his critic Dougherty, played by Rileah Vanderbilt. “The NRA would be proud.” “I’m a member.” Eh, they’re too wishy washy for me. I prefer the good old GOA. Of course, he’s
the jumpy one waving his gun all over the place, and she’s the one actually exercising trigger discipline, at least until she isn’t. But that’s not the point. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” “Hold you fire! Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Andrew’s still alive. All that other killing was mostly off screen. And, you know, we’re gonna have to give Parry Shen our full attention when his time is up. Andrew explains that Victor Crowley slaughtered everybody. The entire first response team dead because Victor Crowley is real and he’s pissed. “And you didn’t fight back?” “No,
I didn’t fight back. I hid. And that’s the only reason those aren’t my balls hanging from that tree.” It’s believable that he could just hide in a pile of dead bodies and Victor Crowley would pass them up. I mean, how many times does he have to kill this man? Is he a repeater, too? So Fowler’s heard enough. He intends to pull out. But what’s this? Hawes refuses to pull out. And as he’s in charge, no one is leaving. I mean, what is there to be scared of, anyway? And while you’re here, you might as well
like and subscribe. There’s just weird, creepy ghost cries echoing throughout the swamp that lead them over to this dilapidated house that Anthony swears is where Victor Crowley lives. What’s the worst that could happen? “Get over here!” And the body count rises. “Now begins the killing, followed by light salad.” As this is a sequel, of course, the kills have to be more extreme and the body count higher. And that means while the movie did its best to work up suspense, now that Victor is on the loose, HOO BOY this is effectively a gory action scene. Resident
Evil style horror with police firing high powered weaponry left and right. While an undead monster uses superpowers to slaughter them all. Well, Hawes doesn’t care. He goes toe to toe with Victor Crowley. An incredibly stupid decision. A fine kill. But I do wish there was more of a back and forth between these two. I mean, come on. Hatchet 2 gave us Leatherface versus Crowley. Here we had the perfect setup for Jason Voorhees versus Jason Voorhees. But oh, yeah, Schneiderman has that rocket launcher. So he launches a rocket that kills one of the officers before he
himself is take it out and taken apart. Thus the few people left alive, must flee for their lives. That’s exciting. So let’s just ignore that for now. To check back in with Amanda and friends. Truth be told, we did this quite a few times so far. I just didn’t bother to showcase them because honestly, it didn’t add all that much outside of reminding us that Marybeth is just sitting in the back of a police car. But they reached the only living relative of Thomas Crowley, Abbot McMullen. “I oughta shoot you dead for waking me up
at this crazy hour. It’s the middle of the night, for Christ’s sakes.” “It’s 8:45.” “Well, that’s what I said.” Played by Sid Haig. And it’s a small role, but he does a fantastic job with it as Abbot isn’t exactly what you would call tolerant or sane or even remotely hospitable. “And don’t you try to steal nothing. I got eyes in the front of my head.” “Why don’t you just offer me some fried chicken and watermelon while you at it?” “I ain’t got no food.” Hell, I don’t care how stereotypical it is. If I’m going to
someone’s house and they offer me brisket and beer, I’m taking it. Besides, it’s not like he’s wrong with suspecting thievery is afoot. Considering that Amanda came in specifically to take Abbott’s uncle’s ashes and go. Diplomacy isn’t working out so well, so she holds him at gunpoint. Which doesn’t bother him much, but the point is, at the end of it all, they steal the ashes and run. “Fucking white people!” Speaking of running, the rest of them are still running for their lives. After all, no one has survived a night with Victor Crowley until a spare paramedic
happens to run into Ben. He’s got his throat slashed in the first movie, but he’s still alive. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” Never mind. But you don’t even need Victor Crowley to be killed in Louisiana swamps when the alligators will work just as well! And alligators have been largely unchanged for millions of years. Some call them living fossils. Living dinosaurs. Jurassic January. It still fits. Right? Thus it’s only Fowler, Dougherty and Anthony who make it back to the boats. “I don’t have the keys.” “What? Why?” “I work with a bunch of redneck racists. They
don’t let me drive anything.” Oh, fair. But if you haven’t noticed, they’re all in various pieces strewn around the set. So find the asses and check the pockets for the keys. No time for that, though, as Victor Crowley is here. So they flee into the boat for safety, barricading themselves inside. Fortunately, while Victor Crowley is a ghost, he’s one of those ghosts made out of human skin and thus can’t go through walls. Even better, they have a working radio in the boat. Thus, Fowler calls in help saying they are under attack and need help. The
military! Godzilla! Anyone, help! They are being systematically killed one by one by none other than… “Victor Crowley.” “Repeat that?” “Crazed gunman!” But Fowler’s seen enough of these movies to know the they never tell the police about the supernatural killer that is actually coming for you. Otherwise they’re not going to believe you. He’s got firsthand experience doing that. As such, they will receive air support. Later. Going to take some time for them to arrive. And in the meantime, Victor Crowley can use a belt sander to grind his way through a wall. Still going to take a
while. So we hop back over to Amanda and friends. They’re almost back to Honey Island Swamp, but Winslow has had enough and decides to call the sheriff himself. However, he can’t get through. And upon hearing that the last correspondence from Fowler was 2 hours ago, Amanda says they must finish going out there at once! “And then what?” “And then we make sure she puts that monster back in his grave where he belongs.” And yeah, Marybeth’s just been hanging out in the back of a police car. Like all movie. Really getting some use out of that
character. They do Finally let her out. Still in handcuffs. Right when Victor suddenly stops grinding his way into the boat, everything is nice and quiet. Spare the distant sound of Amanda calling Fowler’s name, wondering if he’s all right. “Amanda?” And the answer to that is a definitive no. Dropping his gun. The sheriff’s head has been sanded cleaned off. So it’s just Andrew and Dougherty left in the boat. But hey, free gun. Anthony doesn’t trust it, but Dougherty thinks it’ll be fine. You know, as long as she sneaks next to the gaping hole in the wall
as slowly as possible, desperately trying to get the gun that is already well within her reach. But Victor isn’t about to allow that. Not that the gun would actually kill him or anything. We’ve already seen plenty of times in this movie alone, the guns don’t work, but I’m pretty sure they still hurt like hell. All this time, Amanda’s been yelling, trying to get Victor Crowley to come to them, which he does. Great. Now they can work on that whole voodoo curse thing, get Marybeth to give him back his father’s ashes. And that should be that.
“Here.” “Don’t shoot until he has it.” And just to be certain, sprinkle in a little Texas insurance. But rather than go for the urn, he lunges and Winslow shoots him! Again, before he got the remains of his father. So, yeah, didn’t do squat unless you count enraging Crowley, who murders Winslow shortly before tearing Amanda’s head off. Wow, never seen a ranged headbutt before. Victor impales Marybeth! So she just smashes Daddy’s ashes all over his face. And that’s certainly worked in regards to giving them back. As Victor Crowley begins to melt away like he just opened
the Ark of the Covenant. Still not good enough. So Mary Beth blows him off for good measure. But oh, yeah, Impaled. She’s still not doing so hot. So by the time the air support does manage to arrive, Anthony is somehow still alive and well able to signal for help. But Marybeth over here? Yeah. Looks like we won’t find out until the sequel. Anyway, that was Hatchet 3. It’s not as good as the original, but I’d say it’s an improvement over Hatchet 2. With sequels, we of course, know the horror movie rules. More extreme kills, bigger
body count, stronger villain, all that jazz. That’s fine. It’s a trend for a reason. People love that stuff, myself included. But I have to point out that at a certain point you slip away from horror and veer a lot closer to action. And that’s kind of the territory that Hatchet 3 ended up in. Not that there isn’t any kind of horror themes, or that this movie doesn’t attempt it, but the suspense is pretty subdued and the kills are oh so over the top. It’s got more action than most action movies. They might feel more explosive
as well, contrasted against the B story that feels even slower and less interesting than it really should. Very unfortunately, Danielle, Caroline and Robert are all woefully underutilized in this film, despite the amount of screentime they get. Mostly we just see them driving around Amanda and Winslow banter a bit to remind the audience what the plot of the movie is. And all the while Marybeth just sits in the back waiting for the climax. We still got some fun cameos here and there. Good use of horror movie alumni and what have you. But the meat of what
Hatchet 3 gives us is ultra gory slasher kills and boy howdy. Are they meaty, chunky, full of gore and gristle. I had to edit out about 98% of the gore from this review because not only was there a lot of closeups, they spared no expense when it came to the effects. I wouldn’t call them convincing blood fountains that look like five sprinklers tied together don’t exactly scream medical documentary to me, but the bone and entrails hold it all together beautifully. At the end of the day. Hatchet 3 is a fun ride, even though half the
movie seems like it’s trying not to be. Hot the best horror, but a satisfying, action packed romp through Honey Island Swamp. For those of us who wanted to see Victor Crowley go, absolutely ham on as many people as possible and reach a satisfying conclusion coming in at three dead ringers out of five. Not really scary, in my opinion, but I can’t deny that I absolutely loved watching Kane Hodder do what he does best. Thank you all for watching. I have been Decker Shado. And remember, a slip and fall could be a lot more dangerous than
you realize. You never want to end up on an errant chainsaw. “Stay here.” “Where the fuck am I going to go?” Oh, Hatchet. It’s an easy one to do calls of action for. I did reviews of Hatchet 1 and Hatchet 2 already, and for more of Kane Hodder’s work, you could always check out that Summer of Freddy versus Jason. Whole playlist right there. Lots of stuff to check out and to check out stuff that’s coming in the future. Subscribe. Why not just I got calls to action. I’m gonna do some action action movie. Yeah. Horror.
