The second Hatchet film, a slasher of epic proportions written and directed by Adam Green once again, picks up right after the first without missing a single beat as Victor Crowley is about to kill Marybeth played by Danielle Harris. After a tense scene, she manages to get away and goes for help and where else but to the one and only Tony Todd who plays a shady huckster named Reverend Zombie looking to make a bit of money any way he can, even at the cost of a few lives should it mean access to Honey Island swamp once again.

It might be fair to say that Hatchet II is one of those rare occurrences where the second film is better than its predecessor. Surprising though it might sound, Green follows the same formula as he did in the first, not wanting to stray from what so obviously worked so well during the initial go round and who can blame the guy. So what does he do but go bigger, crazier, and bloodier and to simply provide far more of what made the first film so good which is more of the unstoppable Victor Crowley and the man who played him, Kane Hodder. The gore is extreme, the kill scenes so outrageous at times that one can only wonder just how much farther Green can take them and yet as the movie goes on, he continues to push it further and further. The film is also funnier with Todd getting a few smirks and Parry Shen who returns as his own twin brother providing a couple of laughs. There is the odd flaw, such as why anyone would volunteer to go in a swamp which nobody ever returns from and where a known killer lives, even for five hundred dollars. The recasting of Marybeth which was not so awful as it was inconsistent with the previous portrayal of her character, though one could chalk it up to her being exhausted and grieving over the loss of her family. That being said, the film was still all kinds of fun.

While the first movie was all familiar tropes and clichés and this film essentially being a rehash of that, there is little that audiences had not seen by this point. Green though, understands the genre and he makes the film as entertaining and as exciting as he possibly can and for all intents and purposes, he succeeds. Just like Hatchet, Hatchet II leaves off on a cliff-hanger, once again promising another instalment sometime down the road, which luckily for audiences, would happen three years later.

4 out of 5