Instead he convinces Marcus to go on a "Haunted Swamp" tour with him. Marcus reluctantly agrees. As they meet up for the tour in a seedy downtown shop the other patrons of the tour are there, including an elderly couple (who are the only saving grace for characters in this movie), a perverted film director, two bimbo actresses, and a mysterious woman.
Within a few minutes they are off to the swamp for the tour. The tour guide is a cheesy push over who has no clue of his local history. Eventually they get on a boat at the swamp and head out into the night.
But unfortunately the bumbling tour guide crashes the boat and the elderly man gets his leg bitten by a croc. The group heads out into the forest to try and find help or a path back to the city.
However, the group finds themselves by the house of Victor Crowley, one of the local legends. And the group quickly realizes that Victor is no legend. He is a living demon who is out to kill them in the most gruesome ways possible, one by one.
Someone in every horror story is being pursued and punished for something they have wrongly done, or a sin from days past is inflicting itself on those who inhabit the area now.
The slasher genre especially is prevalent with these themes and motifs. One great example of this is I Know What you Did Last Summer. The teenagers in this film accidently kill someone and dump their body for fear of getting caught. But the next summer rolls around and someone is out to kill them all. They are being punished for something they never atoned for.
Hatchet's plot is paper-thin. Some local legend about a deformed killer in the swamp is the background to the story. Then the filmmakers mix in a bunch of cardboard cutout characters--including of course the two bimbos who spend the movies flashing their breasts--and then have them enter the swamp. Then in a rampant killing spree the "local legend" comes out and kills everyone in the grossest ways possible.
There is no other point to the film. I don't care about any of these characters and am glad when they finally die. And the violence in this movie is over the top and not in a tasteful or entertaining way. It is mostly just gross. The reason it is gross is that there is no good moral themes or truly human characters to back it up. A good horror story must earn its violence and gore and this story did not.
Summing it Up
Deaths: 10
Language: 4
Gore Factor: 5
Sex Factor: 4
Scare Factor: 3
Fun Factor: 1
Overall Rating: 1