Who's In It: Danielle Harris, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder
The Basics: Marybeth (Danielle Harris), who escaped from hatchet-wielding Louisiana swamp-thing Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder) in the first movie, is back and she wants revenge on the monster that killed her family. She enlists the help of extreme-drama voodoo guy/charlatan Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd) and off they go with a team of comic sidekicks back into the swamp to be murdered all over again. Victor Crowley, meanwhile, being a ghost/zombie/whatever-he-is, senses their presence and comes equipped with his favorite hatchet, an abnormally large chainsaw and other chopping-up-fools implements.
What's The Deal: If this movie were a Gwar show you'd leave the theater soaked in red Karo syrup. It's that gory. They're releasing it unrated, intentionally side-stepping the ridiculous, arbitrary MPAA (see Kirby Dick's amazing documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated for more jaw-dropping info on them) and giving you all the brutality and mayhem and extended disemboweling and blunt point-of-impact kill scenes you want. And if you're even thinking of seeing a movie called Hatchet II, then you probably do want that. So you're in luck. Is it scary? No, not unless those occasional predictable jolts where a monster jumps out of the bushes is something that scares you. But is it a satisfyingly nasty mess of guts and sliced torsos and belt sanders to the skull? Absolutely, the kind you cheer for.
Making Horror Nerd Hearts Beat A Little Faster: Gore geeks love it when you pander to them and stuff your movie full of inside jokes and references to other horror movies, and this one is like a candy store, starting with a director Adam Green cameo as a vomiting New Orleans tourist and a couple of blink-and-you'll-miss-it jokes about the movie Frozen that includes cameos from its stars Emma Bell and Shawn Ashmore. And on and on like that.
My Favorite Scene: The big climactic battle between Victor Crowley and Reverend Zombie is the closest the world will probably ever get to a showdown between Jason Voorhees and Candyman. And speaking as someone who would love to see that very thing take place, this was particularly exciting.