Review: Hack!

Bizarro couple (Sean Kanan and Juliet Landau) invite various students (including a gay, tokin’ Asian. No, not a token Asian, a tokin...ah, actually, he’s one of those too, come to think of it) on a field trip to their remote island home for wildlife study. Not surprisingly, the film-obsessed hosts have ulterior, bloody motives to just the usual sun, fun, and T&A. Cue the film-reference infused slicing and dicing. Danica McKellar is the resident over-eager film geek, with emphasis on the ‘geek’, Adrienne Frantz is the bad girl, Gabrielle Richens (Remember ‘The Pleasure Machine’?) is the hot foreign exchange student, Burt Young plays a Capt. Quint knock-off to Tony Burton’s Scatman Crothers in “The Shining”, and William Forsythe is a stringy-haired Scottish derelict (yeah, read that one again).

Look at that cast and title, people. It’s called “Hack”, and it stars Winnie Cooper (the lovely and seriously brainy McKellar), Deacon and Amber from “Bold and the Beautiful” (Kanan and Frantz), that faux-British chick from “Buffy” (Landau), Jenna Morasca from TV’s “Survivor” (she was the useless Valley Girl-type who was the least deserving winner the show has ever had), Uncle Paulie and Apollo Creed’s trainer from “Rocky” (Young and Burton), the main portrayer of Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder), a then-frequent centrefold nicknamed ‘The Pleasure Machine’ (Ms. Richens), and William Forsythe for some credibility. Now take away most of the fun thoughts you’ve got in your head right now based on that information. Yeah, sorry but this isn’t good.

This 2007 horror-comedy from writer-director Matt Flynn, wants to be a belated wannabe “Scream”, but it never comes close to making the grade. The heavy-handed, entirely mainstream in-jokes, with one exception, are abominable- Mr. Argento, anyone? Ugh!). Meanwhile, the kitschy cast (most of whom are way too old to be playing students) aren’t very well-utilised, including a surprisingly miscast Kanan, who despite being co-producer and having the best in-joke in the film surrounding his role in “Karate Kid III” never seems comfortable in a junior Vincent Price meets Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” role. Strange, because his stints over the years on “B&B” at least had me thinking he could be a decent ham villain. That’s a shame, because when you compare these soap/B-grade actors to the bland no-namers who quite often frequented slasher films in the 70s and 80s, these guys are at least competent (not that this is a slasher film, it’s a spoof) actors, even if some have been far better elsewhere. Although McKellar has a goofy charm (playing a very Margaret Farquhar role, for “Wonder Years” fans out there), a well-cast Frantz comes off best of the lot, she really had me believing her favourite film was “Hellraiser”. Richens displays her best assets when required, and the gay Asian dude has one extremely funny moment where he bursts into song at the most inopportune time. William Forsythe is inexplicable as a loony Scot, he’s the kind of actor who is either great or...not. He’s definitely the latter here.

Way too self-conscious, and extremely stale, with very little actually going on for way too long an amount of time, plot-wise. Still, the cinematography is attractive (particularly for such a low-budget offering), and the film is quite gory (a nice- if seriously unconvincing- eyeball bit, and hey, you’ve got to give credit to a film that features a decapitation in the opening scene!).

Rating: C