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Hatchet II | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Adam Green |
Written by | Adam Green |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Will Barratt |
Edited by | Ed Marx |
Music by | Andy Garfield |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Dark Sky Films |
Release dates |
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Running time | 85 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $156,190 [1] |
Hatchet II is a 2010 American slasher film written and directed by Adam Green. It is the sequel to Hatchet and the second installment in the titular film series. Picking up right where the first film ended, Hatchet II follows Marybeth as she escapes the clutches of the deformed, swamp-dwelling killer Victor Crowley. After learning the truth about her family's connection to the hatchet-wielding madman, Marybeth returns to the Louisiana swamps along with an army of hunters to recover the bodies of her family and exact the bloodiest revenge against the bayou butcher.
The film sees the return of Kane Hodder and Tony Todd who portrayed Victor Crowley and Reverend Zombie in the 2006 film, respectively. Danielle Harris portrays Marybeth, a role originally played by Tamara Feldman. The film was originally screened at the 2010 London FrightFest Film Festival on August 26, 2010. It was released unrated in the United States on October 1, 2010. A sequel, Hatchet III , was released in 2013.
Immediately after Hatchet , Marybeth Dunston is attacked by Victor Crowley, but manages to escape. Jack Cracker finds her and takes her back to his cabin, but forces her to leave after finding out her last name, telling her to visit Reverend Zombie. Not long after she leaves, Jack is killed by Victor.
Marybeth returns to Reverend Zombie's shop, and he lets her in. After learning her last name, he tells her that her father Sampson was one of the boys responsible for causing the fire that led to Victor's death as a child. He also gives her more details on Victor's backstory; Thomas, Victor's father, had cheated on his wife Shyann with her nurse Lena after Shyann was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Moments before dying, Shyann placed a curse on the child conceived by Lena from the affair. Months later, Lena gave birth to Victor Crowley, but died of fright after seeing Victor's deformed face.
Marybeth tells Reverend Zombie she wants to go back and retrieve the remains of her father and brother. He agrees, but tells her she must bring a family member with her. After she leaves, Zombie calls Justin (the brother of Shawn from the first film), and tells him to summon a group of hunters (specifically including a man named Trent Graves) to go with them. Marybeth returns home, where her uncle Bob promptly shows up. He reluctantly agrees to accompany her to a recruitment meeting in Zombie's shop, where Zombie tells the hunters he will pay them $5,000 for the head of Victor Crowley. Marybeth, Bob and the hunters proceed to venture into the swamp.
As night descends, they find the boat and, as the rest leave, two of the hunters, Cletus and Chad, stay by the boat while the others fan out. Marybeth, Zombie, Justin, Bob and Trent look for Crowley's shed, as well as the bodies of his victims. Along the way, Zombie explains to Justin that Trent, Sampson and Sampson's brother were the kids who started the fire that led to Victor's death. Since Sampson has already been killed by Victor, Zombie believes that if Crowley kills Bob and Trent, his soul will be at peace and he will finally leave the swamp. Meanwhile, Victor begins murdering each of the hunters one by one.
While searching the cabin, the remaining party members hear Victor outside. As they hide, Justin tells Marybeth about Zombie's plot to get her uncle and Trent killed. As she runs to warn Bob, Victor appears behind Justin and kills him with a belt sander. Trent is murdered quickly thereafter, and Zombie drags Marybeth out of the house, trapping Bob inside with Victor, who murders him. Zombie declares Victor Crowley is dead, but Marybeth then reveals Bob was not her real uncle, and was actually her father's best friend; her real uncle had died of leukemia when Marybeth was twelve. Now realizing his plan has failed, Zombie turns to see Victor breaking through the wall of the cabin. Zombie attempts to fight Victor, but is brutally killed in doing so. Seconds later, however, Marybeth strikes Victor in the head with his own hatchet, knocking him to the ground, before she hysterically chops his head into a bloody pulp. She then grabs Zombie's shotgun and fires it into the remains of Victor's head, seemingly killing him.
Emma Bell appears in an uncredited cameo role as Parker O'Neal, reprising her role from Adam Green's previous film Frozen (released seven months before Hatchet II) in a scene serving as an epilogue to the events of the 2010 film. [2] [3]
Hatchet II was announced in November 2008 when Anchor Bay Entertainment released a teaser poster for the film. Adam Green stated that he would be writing and directing, depending on how long the other projects he was working on took. He also stated that if the projects took too long, he would pass writing and directing duties on to someone else. [4] On November 24, 2009, it was officially announced that Adam Green would return to write and direct. [5] The final draft of the script was completed on December 7, 2009. In order to keep details under wraps, even the crew did not receive copies of the script and the majority of cast only received select pages. Fake scripts, fake endings, and fake story lines were circulated around the industry and no visitors or guests were allowed near the set. The cast gathered for their first table reading on December 15, 2009.
On November 24, 2009, along with the announcement that Adam Green would return to write and direct, it was announced that Kane Hodder would reprise the role of Victor Crowley. [6] On November 25, it was announced that Tony Todd would be returning. [7] On December 3, 2009 scream queen Danielle Harris announced on her official Twitter account that she would be taking over the role of Marybeth, which was originally played by Tamara Feldman. [8] On December 8, 2009, A. J. Bowen and director Tom Holland joined the cast. [9] The rest of the cast was announced on December 28, 2009, R.A. Mihailoff, Kathryn Fiore, Parry Shen, Rileah Vanderbilt, Ed Ackerman, Rick McCallum, Colton Dunn and David Foy. [10]
To accommodate Green's promotional duties for the film Frozen shooting had to be split into two parts. The first portion began shooting on January 7, 2010, and ended on January 23. [11] The second portion began January 15, 2010 and shooting for Hatchet II wrapped on February 24. [12]
Hatchet II premiered in Europe on August 26, 2010, as part of London's Frightfest. [13] The film was released unrated in 68 theaters [1] across the United States by AMC Theatres as part of their AMC Independent program on October 1, 2010. [14] [15] The film was scheduled to be released in Toronto and Montreal theaters in Canada on the same day, but it was pulled because it was not rated by the cities' provincial rating agencies. [16] [17] The film was also pulled from U.S. theaters on October 4.
Hatchet II was released on DVD and Blu-ray February 1, 2011. [18]
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On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 42% approval rating based on reviews from 36 critics. The site's consensus states, "Funnier and more gleefully gory than most slasher sequels, Hatchet II aims for so-bad-it's-good territory, but can't quite hack it." [19]
Metacritic, gave the film an average score of 49 out of 100, based on 11 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [20] Adam Green has personally said that this entry in the series is his favorite.[ citation needed ]
Danielle Andrea Harris is an American actress. She is known as a "scream queen" for her roles in multiple horror films, including four entries in the Halloween franchise: Halloween 4 (1988) and Halloween 5 (1989) as Jamie Lloyd, and Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009) as Annie Brackett. Other such roles include Tosh in Urban Legend (1998), Belle in Stake Land (2010), and Marybeth Dunston in the Hatchet series (2010–17). In 2012, she was inducted into the Fangoria Hall of Fame.
Kane Warren Hodder is an American actor, stuntman, and author.
Tony Todd is an American actor who made his debut as Sgt. Warren in the film Platoon (1986), and portrayed Kurn in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1990–1991) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1996). He achieved stardom for his roles as Ben in the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, as the title character in the four films of the Candyman film series (1992–2021) and William Bludworth in the Final Destination franchise (2000–2011). He also starred as Dan in The Man from Earth (2007) and voiced The Fallen in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Darkseid in the DC Animated Movie Universe, Zoom in The Flash and Venom in the Spider-Man 2 (2023) game.
Felissa Rose Esposito, better known as simply Felissa Rose, is an American actress and producer. Rose has amassed over 150 film credits, and is best known for her work in the horror genre, for which she is recognized as a "scream queen".
Thomas Lee Holland is an American filmmaker. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, penning the 1983 sequel to the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, directing and co-writing the first entry in the long-running Child's Play franchise, and writing and directing the cult vampire film Fright Night. He also directed the Stephen King adaptations The Langoliers and Thinner. He is a two-time Saturn Award recipient. Holland made the jump into children’s literature in 2018 when he co-wrote How to Scare a Monster with fellow writer Dustin Warburton.
Caroline Williams is an American actress and producer. She is best known for her role as Stretch in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series. Her other film roles include Alamo Bay (1985), The Legend of Billie Jean (1985), Stepfather II (1989), Days of Thunder (1990), Leprechaun 3 (1995), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Halloween II (2009), and Hatchet III (2013). Williams has made guest appearances on several television series such as Hunter (1987), Murder, She Wrote (1992), ER (1996), Suddenly Susan (1996), Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1997), The District (2003), and Grey's Anatomy (2010).
Hatchet is a 2006 American slasher film written and directed by Adam Green. The film has an ensemble cast, including Joel David Moore, Kane Hodder, Deon Richmond, Tamara Feldman, Richard Riehle, Mercedes McNab, Robert Englund, and Tony Todd. The plot follows a group of tourists on a New Orleans haunted swamp tour, who accidentally get stranded in the wilderness, only to be hunted by a vengeful, supernatural deformed man who kills anyone that enters the swamp. The film's successes spawned a film series including three sequels. A comic book series followed thereafter.
Amara Zaragoza, known by her stage name Tamara Feldman, is an American actress.
FrightFest, also known as Arrow Video FrightFest is an annual film festival held in London and Glasgow. The festival holds three major events each year: a festival running five days over the UK late August Bank Holiday weekend, a Halloween event held in London in late October, and a festival in Glasgow held around February as part of the Glasgow Film Festival.
Adam Green is an American actor, filmmaker and musician, best known for his work in horror and comedy films, including the Hatchet franchise, 2010's Frozen, and the television series Holliston.
Days of Darkness is a 2007 American horror film written and directed by Jake Kennedy. Survivors of a zombie apocalypse, including a young couple played by Travis Brorsen and Roshelle Pattison, seek shelter in an abandoned military complex while they attempt to figure out what has caused the outbreak.
Frozen is a 2010 American psychological survival horror film written and directed by Adam Green, and starring Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers, and introducing Emma Bell in her film debut. It tells the story of three friends stranded in a chairlift after a day of skiing, forced to make life-or-death choices in order to survive and get down.
The Last Exorcism is a 2010 American found footage supernatural horror film directed by Daniel Stamm. It stars Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, Caleb Landry Jones, and Louis Herthum.
Chillerama is an American 2011 horror comedy anthology film consisting of four stories that take place at a drive-in theater playing monster movies. Each segment is a homage to a different genre and style.
Hatchet III is a 2013 American slasher film directed by B. J. McDonnell and written by Adam Green. It is the sequel to Hatchet II, and the third overall installment in the titular film series. Kane Hodder portrays the main antagonist Victor Crowley for the third time in a row, while Danielle Harris returns to play protagonist Marybeth Dunston.
Rileah Elizabeth Vanderbilt is an American actress and producer. She is one of the founding members of Team Unicorn.
Victor Crowley is a 2017 American slasher film written and directed by Adam Green. It is the sequel to Hatchet III, and serves as the fourth installment in the Hatchet film series. Kane Hodder returns to the role of the titular killer Victor Crowley. Critical reaction for the film was generally mixed.
The Hatchet film series consists of American slasher horror films developed from original characters created by Adam Green; including four feature length films. The plot primarily focuses on the unintential encounters of innocent civilians, with the living urban legend of deformed hermit Victor Crowley and the character's violent murders.
Sean Whalen is an American actor and writer. He is known for his work in numerous TV shows, including Shannon's Deal and Grace Under Fire, as well as movies, including The People Under the Stairs and Twister. He is also known for appearing as a hapless history buff in the first "Got Milk?" commercial, directed by Michael Bay, which aired in 1993.
FINAL NOTES: Frozen star Emma Bell has a TV News cameo in Hatchet II, and there are a few cameos I've left out for fear of spoilers.