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Hack! |  | Director: Matt Flynn
Actors: Danica McKellar, Jay Kenneth Johnson, William Forsythe, Sean Kanan, Juliet Landau
Studio: Allumination
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.99
Buy New: $4.94
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Rating:  7 reviews
Format: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 89 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 27403
UPC: 783722274033
EAN: 0783722274033
Theatrical Release Date: October 31, 2007
Release Date: December 11, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Reality filmmaking can be murder. Just ask Vincent King (Sean Kanan) and his wife Mary Shelley (Juliet Landau), two passionate horror fans determined to create the ultimate slasher movie with the unwitting help of a cast to die for. Led by deceptively bookish biology major Emily (Danica McKellar), a group of horny college students visits the Kings' remote island to study the local flora and fa |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Reality filmmaking can be murder. Just ask Vincent King (Sean Kanan) and his wife Mary Shelley (Juliet Landau) two passionate horror fans determined to create the ultimate slasher movie with the unwitting help of a cast to die for. Led by deceptively bookish biology major Emily (Danica McKellar) a group of horny college students visits the Kings' remote island to study the local flora and fauna unaware that they're about to end up on the cutting room floor - literally! - as they are gruesomely dispatched in the style of both classic and contemporary shockers. Who will survive the Kings' insane homage to horror? Anyway you slice it Hack! will keep you guessing and gasping right until the credits and/or heads roll.System Requirements:Run time: 100 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/SLASHER MOVIES Rating: R UPC: 783722274033 Manufacturer No: 27403
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 A Stellar Cast Blended Together Into A Great Slasher Flick August 27, 2009
Daniel A. Foster (Falmouth, MA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Danica McKellar (INSPECTOR MOM), Jay Kenneth Johnson (HOTEL), Juliet Landau (THE TOOLBOX MURDERS), Sean Kanan (THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL), William Forsythe (THE DEVIL'S REJECTS), Lochlyn Munro (FREDDY VS JASON), Kane Hodder (JASON X), Burt Young (ROCKY franchise), Tony Burton (also in ROCKY franchise), Travis Schuldt (THE HITCHER remake), Adrienne Frantz (ED GEIN: THE BUTCHER OF PLAINFIELD), Mike Wittlin (CARPOOL GUY), Gabrielle Richens (GOAL 3), Wondgy Bruny (SOUND VS FURY) and Justin Chon (TWILIGHT) star in this terrific cliched horror comedy about a group of college kids travelling to an island. On this island lives a couple and their minions filming a snuff film. One by one, each college kid gets killed in slasher film style. I give this movie a 5 out of 5 star rating.
 As much as I adore Danica McKellar... June 30, 2009
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Hack! (Matt Flynn, 2007)
If you ever wondered what happened to Danica McKellar's career after The Wonder Years, you have to go trolling through the dark underbelly of "[fill in the network] Original Movie"s. Lifetime and Sci-Fi have seen a good deal of Ms. McKellar recently, so if you're one of those, like me, who considers Danica one of the most attractive women ever to light up a cathode ray tube, you have to prepare yourself for watching some horrendous movies. Hack! has some pretensions toward being more legitimate than that, as it did get released at a festival or two before being relegated to DVD obscurity, but make no mistake, this is a slasher flick for the Lifetime set; anyone's who's seen two or three slasher flicks will find it irredeemably derivative, but those who are unfamiliar with the concepts and history of the genre may find it amusing.
McKellar plays Emily, a movie nerd who is one of a cadre of college students picked to go on a nature expedition for extra credit. (One of the few good things about this movie is Rocky stalwart Burt Young as the boat captain who takes them to the predictably secluded island.) Once they get to the island, the bodies start piling up, and the surviving students have to try and keep surviving while figuring out who's offing their pals. (Also: nice cameo by Kane Hodder, who's played Jason in the Friday the 13th movies for quite a while now, as the killer's first victim.)
Doubt there's anything here that will surprise you; even the big twist is right out of the playbook of another dramatic actress who turned her attention to horror films a number of years ago (can't tell you who, though, because in case you actually want to watch this, it would spoil the surprise). I'm sure, if this is presented to you as a choice, there are easily three or four dozen other slasher films that would fill the bill much better. Opt for one of those instead. * ½
I bow in humble admiration to this brilliant display of affection for horror April 22, 2009
Jason (Backwater, Alabama)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
If there has ever been a movie that paid more respect to the horror genre, I have not seen it. Tongue in cheek yet respectful, Hack is completed saturated with direct references and subtle nuances that pay homage to the great movies in horror while still developing a few interesting twists and a great combination of blood and gore.
After a foreboding intro that feels like the opening scene of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, a group of stereotypical college kids board a boat headed for a secluded island in order to participate in a marine-biology extra credit project. The island's owners, a pair of horror film fanatics, welcome the group with open arms as long as they participate in a little obsessive filming.
Purposefully satirical, the cast fills out in a color-by-the-numbers fashion: obnoxious jock, bookworm girl with pigtails (Danica McKellar - Winnie Cooper), gaysian male, token black dude, druggie chick, creepy boat captain (Burt Young - Paulie from Rocky), a random small-town sheriff (Tony Burton - Duke from Rocky), and an incredibly hot foreign exchange student whose amazing breasts desire fresh air and freedom more than a death row inmate. Add in William Forsythe as an inhabitant of the island, Sean Kanan (The Karate Kid Part III) as the rich owner of the island, and a quick cameo from Kane Hodder - one of the men who have played Jason Voorhees - and you have a cast tailor-made for a horror movie parody.
No less than amazing, the depth to which respect is paid to the horror genre is unparalleled. Gratuitous nudity, ridiculous fireside conversations, people getting "lost", search groups splitting up to "cover more ground", no cellphone coverage, all the kids' hormones rival that of adult film starlets, the house phone gets disconnected, and every other cliché that can be imagined is present. More than one character even acknowledges that it all feels like a typically cheesy movie (they all but stare into the camera). The characters engage in perpetual discussions about great horror flicks, rattling off greats like Friday the 13th, The Birds , Nosferatu, Frankenstein, Psycho, and Hellraiser, just to name a few. Several scenes are filmed with an old 8MM feel; others underwater as if lifted directly from Jaws; one is a tribute to The Ring; the class instructor is named Mr. Argento, and another is named Mary Shelley. The references are the true accomplishment, and half of the enjoyment in watching is attempting to recognize each to the references to the classics.
Titled Hack as a double entendre, the reference is to both the mutilation at the hands of psychopaths, but also a shot at how pathetically lazy the majority of contemporary horror has become (staring at you torture porn). The tongue in cheek nature is fun at times, and acidic at others; true horror fans will be able to detach one from the other.
For general movie fans, this is a solid addition and worth at least one viewing. For true horror fans, this is a town-hall get together where we are each allowed to insert our favorite scene into the plot.
 Quite entertaining April 4, 2008
Pugmom (Pittsburgh, PA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Don't take this movie too seriously- it's actually a quite clever parody of itself, which will become apparent.
The plot is your standard teenagers-on-a remote-island-being-stalked-by-a- mad-killer. A group of college kids sign up for a field trip to a remote island- the purpose of the field trip is never really explained, although it's hinted that it has to do with biology or ecology. The group consists of characters right out of central casting- the nerdy girl with pigtails and glasses, the boy she likes, the jock who carries his football around like Linus and his blanket, the foreign student who likes to show off her silicone-enhanced wares, the token black dude, token Asian dude, and the girl whose every utterance is crude and vulgar (a girl after my own heart). While at first you may roll your eyes at this selection, you'll eventually realize that it's part of the joke.
The movie is meant to be a tribute to horror films, from the names of the characters (e.g. Mr Argento) to the ways in which they're killed. Predictably, each of the students is knocked off while someone records it on film to make a movie. At the end there's a clever twist that keeps you guessing. A few times in the film, the actors even make reference to "being in some s---y horror movie", which is pretty cool.
The acting was pretty good, although some of the humor was lame. The photography was great, especially some of the underwater shots. If you're not a horror afficianado, you may not fully appreciate some of the references in the film. Otherwise, give this one a try.
Behind the Screams February 10, 2008
Mark Eremite (Seoul, South Korea)
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
Making a horror movie is tricky, thankless business. The older you get, the harder it is to find a truly scary film. Maybe this is just a function of age; watch a movie at the age of thirty that scared the bejeezus out of you at age thirteen, and you may find yourself wondering what the teenage you was thinking. Maybe, also, it's simply a matter of unoriginal and uncreative filmmaking. Horror movies stand almost no chance at all of winning any kind of serious awards or acclaim, so their aspirations are limited, and most of the time they try to bank on the things that have worked before, and over and over again. It's a safe bet to say that the bulk of horror writers/directors are no longer interested in actually trying to frighten their smirking audiences. Instead, the genre has devolved into two basic factions: gross-out movies (see the Saw trilogy or either of the Hostels) where all of the creative energy is focused on finding new and interesting ways to slaughter peoiple, or movies that run on pure snark.
Behind the Mask - The Rise of Leslie Vernon and HACK! are NOT scary movies, nor were they meant to be. If you have any doubts about this, they are dispelled from the first frames of both films. Both flicks were written and produced in the same spirit of cheeky playfulness, and both of them work in direct proportion to the number of horror movie references the viewer is able to catch. These are not horror films; they are homages.
BEHIND THE MASK is the smarter of the two, which also means it's the talkier one. Capitalizing on the supernatural serial killer subset of horror films, BEHIND THE MASK seeks to show the genesis of a new killer: Leslie Vernon. Jason, Freddy, Michael -- the movie demythologizes the dark, demonic roots of these unstoppable murderers by analyzing in detail just what it takes to become one of them. Leslie, in the midst of his training in terror, has agreed to allow a documentary film crew follow him around as he plans and schemes his reign of blood. With the help of a mentor (a nicely underplayed Scott Wilson), Leslie sets in motion all of the tried and true totems of any good horror movie: the target virgin, the Ahab (who, in this case, is a straight-faced Robert Englund), the drunken frat boys. He even expounds on all the ways "invincible" killers manage to stay alive, keep their quarry in line, and (seemingly) be in two places at once.
It's a remarkably smart film (my favorite is the deleted scene where Leslie proves that he can, like all hellish fiends, catch up to someone in a foot race without ever actually running). The film mostly has the faded, grainy quality of the documentary camera, but when Leslie is about to accomplish another horror movie cliche, it changes to the sharp, pre-planned film shots of your average scary movie. It's a trade-off that's both rewarding and funny; after successfully navigating through another of creepdom's old chestnuts, Leslie grins and dances and jabbers his excitement to the documentarian. Not the behavior you imagine from a supernatural serial killer, but these are his off-hours.
The film is not without its flaws. It tries to be a little too smart, and stumbles over its own set-up. The film crew that's following Leslie begins to feel compunctions about documenting the murder of innocent teens and librarians, and they start getting involved in the action. This turn of events throws back at the audience the concessions they've already been asked to make, but it also gives the movie a chance to really explore the outer limits of its truisms. It takes a sharp eye to catch 100% of what BEHIND THE MASK is doing, and some might not think it's worth the effort. Still, it's at least as clever as any other horror film you might find out there, even if it's not as scary.
BEHIND THE MASK and HACK! are both homages, but HACK! is more openly satirical. It doesn't go whole hog with the parody until the last fifteen minutes, when the script's self-deprecation becomes equally self-congratulatory, but it doesn't take a viewer of much discernment to see the gears at work in the opening scenes. The dialogue and acting are so incredibly awful, they're funny in a way that must be intentional. And, again, audiences educated in horror movie lore should catch dozens and dozens of filmic references, some of them overt, some of them less so. It's basically what you would get if the makers of The Simpsons sat down to write a scary movie.
That comparison isn't an accident. A group of inanely stereotypical college students travels to a secluded island as part of some ludicrously vague field trip. Among the island's inhabitants is a Scottish groundskeeper named Willy (played perfectly by William Forsythe). Also on the island: a young couple who are crazy about horror films. The annoying students trade some of the cheesiest banter in movie history, take part in a few gratuitously nude scenes, and get dispatched in gory but decidedly unscary moments. The characters don't hesitate to announce (over and over) that they feel like they're living in a cliched horror movie.
The only real problem with HACK! is that it works so hard to be cheesy and stupid that it ends up being legitimately cheesy and stupid. The denoument is the smartest and cleverest thing about the film, when the dialogue gets some punch and when the reflective veneer of the script shines its brightest, but before this you must endure some of the lamest scenes ever committed to horror-film. True, the scenes are self-consciously lame, but that doesn't make them any less of a chore to watch. There's only so many times an audience can roll its eyes before its eyes get tired of rolling.
I applaud the effort, though. Much like BEHIND THE MASK, HACK! turns its final screws during the credits, and provides at least enough giggles to partially make up for the lack of screams the genre as a whole has failed to create in recent years. At the very least, both films give due credit to the fans they honor. Horror movies may have gotten pretty stupid in recent years, both flicks seem to say, but that doesn't mean the audiences have, too.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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