I hate to show up empty-handed.

I’d planned to do a review of HATCHET II this week, but I just missed it. Heading over to the movie theater on Monday night, I was perplexed to see it wasn’t listed on the big board above the cashiers. When I asked one of them where the movie went, they were as confused as I was. Didn’t this movie just open last Friday? Don’t movies usually at least get a week in theaters, whether they do well or not?

HATCHET II, Adam Green’s gory sequel to his campy cult movie HATCHET (2006), starring Kane Hodder as maniacal hatchet murderer Victor Crowley, was already getting some attention because it was one of the rare times that the AMC Theater chain had released a movie that didn’t have a MPAA rating. Too gory for an “R” rating, movies like HATCHET II either get sliced to the bone to get the R, or go straight to DVD. But this time around, AMC decided to do something different. They decided to put HATCHET II in theaters, uncut and unrated.

For whatever reason (it’s still not clear yet), they changed their minds and yanked the film after just three days.  This is not the way business is usually done. And my thinking I could go see HATCHET II on a quiet Monday night turned out to be a bad decision. I should have caught it earlier. Now I’ll have to wait for the DVD.

We’ll definitely review it here at CinemaKnifeFight.com when it comes out on DVD. But it would have been nice to see it on the big scream – er, screen.

~L.L. Soares

PS: We’ll return with new content tomorrow.