Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (3 Stars)

I don't often buy films at random, based on the cover. I often browse the Blu-ray collection at Saturn while I'm waiting for a film to start in the cinema opposite, but it's only to inform myself on what's new. Today was a rare exception. I found "Blood Night", a film I'd never heard of, in the horror section. It had a naked woman on the cover, which immediately got me interested. But what clinched the deal was the price: only 2.99 Euros ($3.50, £2.70). At that price there's nothing to lose.

The story begins in 1978. A twelve-year-old girl called Mary Mattock has her first period. This traumatises her so much that she stabs her mother to death and cuts off her father's head. She's committed to a lunatic asylum.

Fast forward to 1989. Mary is still in the asylum. She has a baby after being raped by a nurse. The baby is stillborn, which puts her into her second big state of trauma. She gets up off her hospital bed and kills the midwife, the doctor, the nurses, the security guards; everyone she can get her hands on. She staggers out of the hospital naked, and she's shot dead by the police who are waiting.

The end? No, those are just the pre-credits scenes.

While the opening credits run, we see in a series of newspaper articles that Mary Hatchet, as she's now called, has become a local hero. Every year the anniversary of her death is celebrated as Blood Night. Young people get drunk and tell one another stories about Mary Hatchet returning from the grave. New stories are invented every year, adding to the folklore, but is it possible that some of the stories could be true? Now it's 2009, the 20th anniversary of her death, so the parties will be the biggest ever.

At this point it's obvious that the film is going to be a teen slasher movie. Someone is killing the kids at a party and cutting their heads off. In true teen slasher form, the first victims are the ones who have sex. There's a plot twist near the end that was totally unexpected.

The film has some very good ideas, but it has two major faults. The first is the slow pacing in the first half of the film. For half an hour after the opening credits nothing important happens. The teenagers meet, they buy drinks, they make out. An occasional jump scare would have increased the suspense, but as it was, the film was turning in circles. All the time I was thinking to myself, "When is someone finally going to die?" The other fault is that there any many scenes which are too dark to see exactly what's happening. Yes, the film takes place at night, but the scenes could still be lit enough to make the action clear. Look at the old Hammer Horror films for comparison; night is never completely dark.

This is the Blu-ray cover that attracted my attention. A naked girl with an axe is sexy, even though the film's title censors the picture. I don't regret buying the film. It's definitely worth 2.99 Euros, but I doubt I'll watch it again soon. If anything, it's given me a taste to rewatch the classic teen slasher films like the Scream trilogy.

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