Victor Crowley was dead. After the events of 2013’s Hatchet III, the raging, malformed ghost that has made his name by colourfully tearing intruders to his swamp limb from limb like an R-rated Shrek; but the finale of that movie didn’t leave much to the imagination when it came to the ultimate vanquishing of Kane Hopper’s other slasher icon. However, if you actually thought that supernatural killers remain dead in their movies then I must sumise that you are, in fact, a horror tourist would would wander off into the woods if you were to hear a strange noise.
That’s right, after remaining in hibernation for all of four years, Adam Green returned back to the franchise he created, banged out a fourth installment in secret and resurrected the dungarees clad bezerker that headlined the throwback horror comedies that tipped their blood stained hats at old school gore.
But while Victor certainly has his plus points, was his return to the slasher world something that actually needed to happen. I mean sure, big Vic can rip a jaw off like no one else, but would anyone have noticed if he’d just remained at rest and never picked up that belt sander every again,
Ten years after the rampage of Victor Crowley claimed the lives of over forty people over a period of three nights, we pick up with the sole survivor, EMT Andrew Yung, trying to make as much money as he can off the back of his nightmarish experience. However, after being exonerated for the gargantuan bloodbath, there’s still plenty of people who still think that the legend of Crowley is just that and Yung is the true perpetrator and the promotion tour of his new book isn’t making things any easier. Wanting to put all this Victor Crowley shit behind him, Andrew is enticed to return to Honey Island Swamp for an interview for a true crime TV series for a hefty wad of cash, but his decision proves to be predictably disastrous when the plane containing him, his agent Kathleen, ex-wife chat show host Sabrina and the crew of the show crashlands into the swamp. Worse yet, a group of young filmmakers who have visited the area in the hope making a proof of concept trailer for a Victor Crowley movie, have found the voodoo incantation that curse Crowley in the first place on YouTube and after they play it, it brings the vengeful, skull-pulping maniac back to life just in time to take advantage of the air crash.
Despite being at rest for a decade, it soon becomes obvious that Crowley hasn’t lost a step and while the survivors cower within the wreckage of the plane, the brutal slasher stalks and claims them one by one in appropriately gruesome fashion. Can this new batch of victims hope to escape in one piece and can Andrew possibly hope to scrape through a second encounter with Victor while still keeping all his internal organs safely within their original packaging?
While the Hatchet franchise may not have endeared itself to me as much as some other, splattery series, I have to say, sometimes it’s jokey desire to skip straight to the bloody stuff has been frequently quite endearing. It’s obvious that every time Adam Green has involved himself with one of these installments, he has absolutely no interest in making any commentary about the world or trying to find any allegories lurking within all the decapitations and power tool abuse and literally requires nothing of its audiences other than to laugh at the funny bits and cheer at the gore. Its with this in mind that we discover that after a little time away, Victor Crowley proves to probably be the best balanced entry to date as Green not only scores some impressively nasty deaths, but probably the most consistently funny script the series has ever enjoyed.
It’s obvious that Victor Crowley isn’t operating with the biggest budget, but Green is now a far more experienced filmmaker and is able to let his limited locations and smaller cast take the strain while keeping aimless wandering around the woods to a minimum. In fact, keeping the majority of the action based the plane wreckage proves to be far more engrossing that the large amounts of repeated scenes set in identical, woody locations which sometimes left the Hatchet movies feeling a little samey. However, while there’s less budget this time around to rope in large amounts of horror celebrities, Green now ensures the ones he does get manage to have maximum impact. OK, so Felissa Rose from Sleepaway Camp, Dave Sheridan from Scary Movie and Laura Ortiz from the Hills Have Eyes remake is hardly the likes of scoring various faces from the Freddy, Jason, Letherface and Candyman franchises, but all three of them actually give legitimately fun comedic performances rather than just being there just for the sake of it. In fact, Rose in particular not only displays some sweet comic timing, but probably scores the best death the film has to offer as her odious agent gets to experience her smartphone in a way the manufacturers would most definitely not recommend.
Ah yes, those deaths. Where would the Hatchet franchise be without those slapstick acts of violence that balance chuckles and gore with a hefty dollop of cruel irony. One dude has the top of his head sheared off only for his scalp to plop onto the face of his trapped girlfriend; another has his head prised off with a claw hammer abd there’s a perfectly timed gag involving a guy driven through a door when the plane first starts having troubles. But while Rose’s death takes first prize after her severed arm is rammed up through her body and out of her mouth, the movie switches things up a little bit with the prolonged drowning of a character trapped in the wreckage adding a weird bit of poignancy to such a willfully silly film. To be fair, series stalwart Kane Hodder literally has nothing more to add to his Crowley performance than to continue to be mummified in full body prosthetics and rip fake bodies to pieces, but he still seems to be having fun despite Crowley’s boney visage looking agony to wear and some of Green’s jokes play a little too long (his drawling pilot PA gag soon outstays it’s welcome), but despite some of these stumbling blocks, Victor Crowley plays best when it stays in its blood stained lane.
If I’m being honest, despite not hating any of the installments to date, I’ve still kind of looked down on the franchise over the years simply because it had not interest in being more than just a silly series of slashers that enjoyed throwing in a ton of jocular humour in with its exagerated bloodletting. However, now that I’m expecting nothing more from the the misadventures of Victor Crowley other than devestating mutilations, endless in-jokes (it’s about time the endlessly returning Parry Shen graduated to lead) and immature dick jokes (quite literally this time round with an unexpected exposure of male genitalia) I feel I’m finally seeing the franchise the way I should have when it first surfaced.
Victor Crowley doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but then Victor Crowley doesn’t particularly want to. So shut up, watch it, and appreciate arguably the funniest installment of the stealth franchise whose greatest sin is just embracing the silliness. Just my luck, I finally get what this franchise is slinging, and noe they’ll probably not make any more… but I guess that’s on me.
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 