Movie Review: Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2009)

A review of the 2009 horror movie starring Danielle Harris and Nate Dushku.

Synopsis: In 1989, Mary Mattock, who suffers from menstrual psychosis and is serving time in a psychiatric hospital for murdering her family, is raped by a prison guard and becomes pregnant. When she gives birth and is told the baby was still born, she goes on a killing spree at the hospital before being gunned down by the police.
The anniversary of her death is celebrated by local high school students as "Blood Night." This is all fun and games until a group of teenagers, celebrating in 2008, apparently unleash her vengeful spirit.

Who's in It?

The movie stars Bill Moseley, Danielle Harris, Nate Dushku, Samantha Siong, Anthony Marks and Alissa Dean.

Review

Even though we were both tired after celebrating Independence Day on Saturday, my wife and I decided to attempt to watch a movie before bed. After some discussion, we picked out the film Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, believing, at minimum, it would be an OK thriller. Boy, were we wrong.

This film had two major things working against it. The first was the fact it was extremely predictable. From the second she was told she lost her child, I was able to correctly summarize what was going to happen during the course of the movie and predict who was really killing the kids and was even able to correctly guess how the film was going to end. I've said it plenty of times before and I'll say it again, predictable horror films are never scary.

Of course, even if the movie wasn't predictable, it still likely wouldn't have been very good. This is because it takes what seems like forever for anything to actually happen. Basically, to summarize, you have a bunch of high school kids getting drunk in a cemetery and the same kids, later, getting drunk in a house (after the obligatory Blood Night prank). After drinking, they begin to make out and some separate to go have sex before, finally, someone finally gets killed when the movie is half over and that killing is followed by even more sex before the killing spree starts. When you add in the fact Mary (Siong) herself is naked throughout the film, it was difficult to tell if this was a horror movie or a soft core porn movie.

Sadly, even the murder scenes were somewhat weak, with the filmmakers focusing on the excess blood and gore and less on trying to build up suspense and make those scenes somewhat scary as a result. Let's face it, you can only see so many decapitations before they become redundant and boring.

Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet

A group of teenagers celebrating Blood Night, the anniversary of the death of a local axe murderer, Mary Hatchet, suddenly find themselves face to face with the realities of her...

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Final Opinion

I think, based on the subject, this movie had potential to be a truly scary paranormal horror film. The overall execution, however, was a major disappointment and, because of that, this is a movie I would not recommend wasting your time watching.

My Grade: F