Taking A Hatchet To Horror
Folks, click that awesome poster and read the top line carefully.
All I can say is … AMEN!
Horror films go in cycles. A brilliant one arrives out of nowhere, and then is endlessly imitated for five to ten years before the next one comes along to reinvigorate the genre.
The last rush of horror films squirted from the slashed vein of Japanese horror remakes, thanks to The Ring – a film I didn’t particularly like, and whose subsequent imitators left me severely saddened for the state of horror films.
After that, general, non-Japanese remakes took over, with bastardized versions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, The Fog, The Omen, and The Hills Have Eyes among the criminals clogging the system. Rob Zombie’s Halloween shit-fest is just the latest offender in this once-proud genre.
But now might be the right time for the next great horror film … and not a moment too soon.
The long-delayed Hatchet arrives in theaters this weekend to tremendous buzz. Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News used approximately 267 exclamation points in describing this film last year. Now audience everywhere will be able to judge for themselves if this is truly “Old School American Horror.”
Check out the brilliantly moody trailer for the flick after the jump:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_lzxS2fRVM[/youtube]
That trailer totally sells me on the film without giving much away. It also gives me a glimmer of hope that this might finally be the giant sneeze we needed to clean out the nostrils of horror cinema. So many modern horror films look and feel like commercials; they are far too slick, well-lit, and phony.
This, on the other hand, looks as if it was shot 30 years ago with a 16mm camera – and that’s a HUGE compliment coming from me. I grew up loving the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead, and Halloween. Those films have a gritty reality that inserts you into the experiences onscreen.
I sure hope this is the one. If not, I suppose we can always wait for Saw 4.
Ugh.
Fantastic. I love the poster. In my opinion, you know who was lined up to become the “new king” of old school American horror? Eli Roth. Just check out Cabin Fever again. Reverential to the 70s and 80s, smart, cheeky, scary, funny. He was there. I think he’s kind of blown it by getting somewhat obsessed with torture terror.
And I hope the Harry Knowles comment was a slag. It was, wasn’t it?
One more thing: Speaking of endless remakes of Japanese films, I started watching Takashi Miike’s original One Missed Call. Nice idea, and some great Miike style. I’m hoping the remake doesn’t suck but, you know…
Later.
Norm
http://www.meetinthelobby.com
The trailer set’s this up to be pretty scary. Not scary as in tons of blood and gore…but scary as in I’ll be leaving the nightlight when i go to sleep tonight.
Yikes.
This is a very, very good trailer. Moody and creepy. A bit overdone as far as the scary/cutesy kid VO goes, but still excellent.
Which bums me out because this movie also has an “official” trailer – indicated, I guess, by the Anchor Bay logo at the beginning – which has a lot of the elements from this clip, but is wholly more derivative and Marketing Friendly™.
It’s here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlgsiix43KU
Overall, the movie still looks good, but the official trailer is crap compared to the one you’ve got here.
This looks scary. This is how a horror movie should look.
If somehow it’s not scary, I would be amazed because that is the creepiest trailer I have seen in a long time.
Note to Rob Zombie. This is what a scary movie looks like.