Hack!

Hack! is a story of 7 High School kids who are invited to an island as part of their biological studies but end up getting killed, one by one. This is a deliberately clichéd film with its tongue planted firmly in cheek, a fun take on horror movies, in particular slashers, torture porn and even J-Horror. The students, who are played by actors in their 30's, are as stereotypical as you get - the jock, the sultry slut, rock chick, geeky need, gay Asian guy, the token black guy and the handsome hero. The acting is decent and the cast includes horror legend Kane Hodder and Burt Young, though only in minor roles. The film has plenty of effective gore and a high enough body count, to ensure things never get boring. Aside from a period of bad sound and obvious day for night scenes the production is pretty good. I picked up my copy on DVD and as a horror fan I enjoyed this, genre movies being name checked throughout, including characters with surnames King, Argento and Shelley. Not as silly as the Scary Movie series but still very much a comedy, the sort of film that goes well with a few alcoholic beverages.

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.

A group of students go to an island to study biology, although they all seem to like discussing horror films and almost no one wants to actually do their work. Drugs and sex are rampant, and the island's residents are a bit odd. Not "odd" in a weird way so much as eccentric, so the students go along with it. Then someone decides to kill the kids... and suspicions fall on one after another suspect.

Danica McKellar stars in this film as teacher's assistant Emily Longley. When the movie began and Danica entered the screen, I was smitten: I knew I had found possibly the most beautiful woman in movies (aside from my all-time favorites of Mandy Moore and Christina Ricci). So I looked her up and was shocked -- this was Winnie Cooper from "The Wonder Years" (who was never "hot" by any means, even though I think many kids had a crush on her for some reason). So, my point is: McKellar as the shy, bespectacled teacher's aide... priceless.

From there on out, I can understand why this film is generally considered pretty lackluster. It has a cheese factor somewhere between Gouda and Camembert. The movie rips off other horror films -- many character names are horror-based (Argento, Carpenter, etc.) and there's countless references (the boat being named Orca after the "we're going to need a bigger boat" line was awesome). If you don't love horror, these jokes are not funny... and even if you do, it might take a special kind of humor (the film is called "Hack" -- lighten up!).

Treat the movie like a game, and see how many references and rip-offs you can catch. Some are obvious (they directly mention a variety of films, including the Billy Zane classic "Dead Calm") and others not so much. I guarantee you I missed some of the references -- now I have to watch it again, and I gladly would.

Horror fans will also like the nudity (it's limited but it's here) and the blood. We got chainsaws, piranhas, sharp blades and even a scene with samurai or something (a reference I definitely missed). I can't wait to see it again so I can write a better review... oh yeah, Kane Hodder shows up briefly, too, and William Forsythe is a weird Scottish groundskeeper. Just watch this!!!

Hack! is one of those tongue-in-cheek scary movies that thinks it's being original, witty and clever by referencing past horror classics and playing on the stereotypes and clichés of the genre, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth: loading a film with exaggerated characters named after well-known horror icons, and having them make post-modern observations and spout self-conscious dialogue is not only a very stale routine, but in this particular case also somewhat insulting to its intended horror-savvy audience, to whom these nods to the movies they love will seem extremely obvious and rather irritating.

Fortunately, as tired and predictable as the format may be, the film does have its positives, in the very welcome form of juicy gore and tasty babes! Director Matt Flynn wisely sees fit to include plenty of splattery kills, including a bloody chainsaw attack, a gory hook through the eye, and a shotgun blast to the head, and the fine selection of hotties include one time Buffy vamp Juliet Landau, the stunning Gabrielle Richens (who happily gets her ample norks out), and Danica McKellar of The Wonder Years fame, who regrettably keeps her kit on, thus disappointing the legion of pervs who always wondered what a grown up Winnie might look like in the buff.

Throw in a creepy clown, killers dressed in Japanese costume for absolutely no reason, and a pool of piranha, and what you have is a very cheesy, non-essential popcorn flick that won't win any awards for originality, but which is just about daft enough, sexy enough and silly enough for it to still warrant a watch.

It seems like the writer is a big fan of horror movies with the countless references to many horror classics. I don't think that the actors are the problem of this film, but more so the dialogue. Some of the actors are actually really good, but not in this film, a lot of the dialogue just makes them sound stupid. The writing is really horrible in this. There is no investment in the characters, you don't really care about any of them.

It seems to me that this film is trying to be a homage to horror films, but instead looks like film saying "Hey, look at me, I like horror films." This isn't just a bad horror movie, it's a bad attempt at a horror movie.