You love the festival for its crowd. There's nothing better than seeing a films in a theater packed with people who actually want to see them (because they were in it, or otherwise). Even waiting in line for my press ticket . . . you go to a film festival in part for the experience itself.--- Hatchet
A gory throwback to slasher films of yore, the only thing sharper than the hatchet in question is Adam Green's script (his directing ain't bad neither). Hatchet is surprisingly entertaining given the flimsy premise, and though we've all heard the horror schtick before ("I ain't even supposed to be here!"), when it comes right down to it, nothing beats a bunch of teens trapped in a mystical New Orleans swamp, hunted by the spirit of ol' Victor Crowley. (The choice to make two characters glorified strippers -- boobies everywhere for the first half-hour -- that doesn't hurt Hatchet's target demographic either.)
The acting is also surprisingly first-rate: these characters make their shallowness funny by playing it straight, and both the token black guy (Deon Richmond) and sassy Asian (Parry Shen) rise above stereotypes to be genuinely endearing (well, at least at times). The only problem with Hatchet is that it's more of a bludgeon than a hatchet. The entire film comes at you in brutal rushes, and the killing is never especially clever, just especially bloody. That's fine for robust horror fans, but for anyone outside that niche audience, the violence gets a little old. Luckily, Green balances the "interludes" with comedy (a certain scene with a raccoon in the bushes comes to mind), and the laughing serves as enough of a diversion to whet our appetites for more (even if it's more of the same).
Victor Crowley is no Jason (no offense to Kane Hodder, who plays them both), but there's a big fat "yet" attached there, as the one is a throwback to the other. In the meantime, this is an enthusiastic film for horror enthusiasts, one that chops to the heart of an often dull genre.
--- Fifty Pills
If you mixed American Pie with The Rules of Attraction and kept the whole thing really light, you'd get Fifty Pills, a teen coming-of-age comedy about a freshman on the verge of expulsion who turns to selling exstacy as a way out. If he can sell his roommate's fifty pills by the end of the day, he can pay off his college bills; if not, he can kiss everything he loves goodbye. This plot, based (loosely?) on writer Matthew Perniciaro's experiences at NYU leaves a lot of openings for cheap college humor, and both Perniciaro and director Theo Avgerinos leap at the chance to showcase Darren's deviant peers.
The problem they face in Fifty Pills is that none of their situations are particularly funny. Darren's roommate, Coleman (John Hensley) is a likeable bastard, but unfunny. And Darren's reactions to him (spoken through the fourth wall to the audience) come across as forced. Of the quirky cast, Darren's crush, Gracie (Kristin Bell) comes across as shallow, and the various peers get too little screentime to be anything more than anecdotes. The S&M queen who shares an apartment with her grandmother doesn't go anywhere, and while Eddie Kay Thomas is hysterical as Ralphie, a Diff'rent Strokes-obsessed addict, his reappearence later in the film is a desperate plea for laughs. Maybe the writer and director realized that the "villain," Eduardo (Michael Pena) stops being funny after the first time he mentions "crapping his pants during the hammer dance," or maybe they just don't know how to write a scene devoid of gags.
In any case, Fifty Pills operates as an average teen comedy, and since that's already well below the standards of good cinema, this is one film you can skip.
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