And the original trilogy is complete! (Until I get to the next one.)

Hatchet III  begins exactly where Hatchet II left off, directly after SPOILER! Marybeth shoots Crowly in the freaking face. Of course, he’s not dead yet (if he was this would be the shortest sequel ever) and after he rises up, lacking previously mentioned face, Marybeth dispatches him for the second time and flees the swamp.

Obviously traumatized and not thinking clearly enough to just chalk the whole thing up as two of the worst nights of her f*&king life, Marybeth wanders into a police station. Because the police will undoubtedly be willing to help any shotgun wielding, scalp carrying, blood-soaked girl who walks in….

Sadly, she missed the sign outside that read: “Any crazy people covered in blood and carrying a weapon and/or body parts will be shot on sight.”

Of course, no one believes her explanation of “The swamp ghost did it” and boatloads of police officers and paramedics are dispatched to the swamp to pick up the pieces of her story… the many, many pieces.

Of course, once nighttime rolls around the inevitable happens…

Drunken paramedic party?

Which causes a SWAT team to show up….

Still not enough.

And Marybeth ends up forced into a plan against her will to try to put Victor Crowly in the grave once and for all.

Damn it all! Can’t you people just leave me in my f*#king cell?

Like its predecessors Hatchet III is filled with gore and frights and copious amounts of blood. While the first one focused more on horror and setting up the story and the second one focused less on horror and more on overly exaggerated death sequences, Hatchet III is more of a melding of the two. There are some jump scares and some genuinely tense, drawn out moments, but it also has several death sequences that will probably satiate most gore hounds.

I will say though, that it is not as gory as the previous installment. In fact, after watching two movies where the camera lingered on the drawn out deaths, I was surprised to notice several instances where the deaths occurred off-screen. And while the body count may be bigger, a good chunk of them occur during a very rapid sequence that only lasts a couple of minutes.

The series previous self-referential humor is still here as well. Thankfully, for me, it was better implemented than Hatchet II. And Hatchet III is filled with just as many horror icons and familiar faces as the rest of the series.

Just how many brothers do you freaking have?

So basically, if you liked the other two films you’ll like Hatchet III. It probably won’t live up to the expectations that Hatchet II left behind. My only gripes with it were that Danielle Harris didn’t have enough a$$-kicking time and they left it with a bit of an ambiguous ending (those bastards). Other than that though, it’s not bad.

Moral of the story: Get stuck in the haunted swamp once? Shame on the clumsy tour boat driver. Go in a second time? Shame on that charlatan of a reverend. Go in a third ti-…You know what? Fudge it. You’re on your own.

Hatchet III is available on a variety of streaming services.

It is also available on DVD and Bluray.