Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet

Blood Night:  The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2009)
directed by:  Frank Sabatella
starring:  Danielle Harris, Bill Moseley, Nate Dushku, Samantha Siong, Patricia Raven
Format:  DVD Private Collection

    This film tries so hard to be a good horror film.  Danielle Harris and Bill Moseley star in it and they even threw in 45 Grave's, "It's Party Time" from Return of the Living Dead plus a fun chant of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes".  First off I will say the introducing story-line was quite promising.  A little girl murders her family in a gore-filled killing spree of both terrible and decent combinations of cgi and old school special effects.  She then ends up in an asylum where she grows up into a beautiful young woman and gets raped and pregnant by a security guard who insists she "goobly goo his lolypop"!  After she is told the baby died during child birth Mary decides it's time to take revenge and massacre everyone in the asylum.  Somehow she summons the strength to twist a nurses head backwards and a gore spree ensues which again is just beyond my point of disbelief.  Mary Hatchet is no Michael Myers.

 Now my biggest complaint with this film and which ultimately ruins the whole film for me.  It's very pixelated and I'm sorry it just made me sick at moments.    The acting is bad but not terrible and the script basically goes to shit after the intro.  Bill Moseley is a very nice touch and you would think he or Danielle Harris could at least make the film re-watchable but it's just too bad.
The clumsy use of sounds and jumpy imagery was no help either.  I have no idea why some directors think high pitched sounds combined with jittery shot techniques works for every film.  Nor was this film well edited during these scenes.  Also we have a director who thinks that having blood splatter all over the camera during kill scenes is acceptable in pretty much anything but a found footage film.  I mean come on nothing takes the viewer out of film reality like a reminder that there are cameras involved.  For me anyway any smudge, splatter, or dot is a blinding red flag that hey I'm just watching a movie.  One nice thing about the film though is the body count.  A lot of slasher films new and old never have enough kills, at least for me...even the classic Halloween.  There are some complaints here I've mentioned that are easy to look past singly in a film but Blood Night is just relentless with all and for me this film is just a complete dud.