Some things, despite being good, should never have happened: N. W. A. Caused the creative hip-hop of the 80s to be buried underneath hordes of unpleasant gangsta rappers; Disney-Pixar's magical films have replaced the charm of hand-drawn animation with sterile CGI; postmodern horror classic Scream launched a thousand dull horror films that thought they were clever. Which brings me to Hack!, a film that very much follows Scream's template, with a touch of (underdeveloped) reality TV satire. Seven students and their teacher come to an island for a biology project; soon, of course, they are being hacked apart. Hack! Tries to freshen up its slasher clichés by introducing a snuff twist, but it adds nothing to the film other than some annoying shots through an old-fashioned, wind-up camera, while the way the film tempers its classical horror references (The Birds, Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) with more modern phenomena (Saw, cult TV series Desperate Housewives, reality show Survivor) feels like a desperate bid to be hip.
Technically, this film is a mess. Shots slip randomly in and out of focus: some are a few seconds long, some scenes continue long after their apparent end; continuity seems to have been deliberately disregarded, the music seems to be totally unrelated to what is happening on the film; in one scene, it is so clear stock footage is being used that you feel a bit embarrassed.
The script fares no better: moronic characters spout film references with such unsubtlety that every gentle nod is a headbutt, every playful nudge an elbow in the ribs. The acting is appallingly inane (other than the always-lovely Danica McKellar's turn as Emily) and plot holes gape at you at every moment: characters act with no motivation, every boy and girl couple up despite having nothing in common. In spite of all its flaws, however, there is something likable about Hack!. I can't for the life of me place what it is, but it's there. This is a film, bless it, that really tries hard, but it ultimately fails. It fails because it wallows in its own stupidity while trying to be all clever-clever with the audience, it fails because it believes that pointing out that it is full of clichés prevents the clichés from being boring, and it fails because its constant self-referentiality soon becomes a drag. People, it's been eleven years since Scream; surely it's time for a new horror bandwagon?
In the end, while I would sincerely like to declare this film a cult classic, I cannot possibly score it in the upper half of scores - so it gets a 4, the highest score a bad film can get.
