Review of Hack! (2007) by Jason B — 14 Oct 2008

A group of students go on an extra credit field trip and fall victim to horror film cliché deaths. And those clichés are everywhere. It embraces its unoriginality like a security blanket. Each murder is meant to be an homage to a classic horror film, even the characters are named after horror icons.

It doesn't end there. Like any cheesy horror the acting is bad and at times nauseating to watch but the bad acting is purposeful and the clichés continue. Juliet Landau actually handles this very well as she's already accustomed to playing completely insane characters with an underlying darkness form her stint as Drusilla on Buffy. Every clichéd teen character you can think of is here, the jock, the babe, the geek, the gay guy, the bitch, and the handsome hero.

Hack is trying to be more clever than it actually is. Horror film inspired killings was a driving force behind Scream so there is more than a sense of been there, done that. The few twists and turns are so horribly telegraphed that it was like the director was shining a huge spotlight on it so you wouldn't miss how "clever" he is. He's not.

The film is meant to be an homage and a spoof of the horror genre but the jokes aren't funny and the horror isn't interesting. The whole thing seems like a pointless endeavor to blow some budget money but it is evident that everyone involved had fun doing despite how terrible it truly is.