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.