The Ghost Writer

When I go to see a horror movie in theaters, ⅓ of what I’m excited for is to see what’s coming up next. Because regardless of how you feel about horror movies, horror trailers are objectively art.

Take 28 Years Later. I know this is an unpopular opinion, and I’m happy to discuss it in a later post, but the movie itself felt like an entirely different movie to the trailer. In a bad way.

The trailer promised grit. It gave an ancient, haunting, primal flavor of WAR. I went in expecting WAR, war against the virus, against zombies. Against a different version of mankind. What I was given was a slanted bildungsroman that ended in bitter disappointment. Other recent trailers that outperformed their movies: Longlegs (my most heartbreaking disappointment) and Weapons

Conversely, trailers that fail their movies. Equally as frustrating. For one, there’s the actual mood-ruiner, like Black Phone, whose trailer and cover image both ruin the mood that the movie, and even the title sequence, execute beautifully.

But god, Abigail. Abigail was a phenomenal movie, but you would have had to go in completely blind to experience it the way it was intended. The trailer spoiling the reveal, that Abigail was a vampire, legitimately kneecapped the movie. An artful trailer would have implied at a sinister force, and maybe the movie should have been named something different. Imagine the reactions in theater at discovering the plot twist, if it wasn’t explicitly stated in the trailer. I can’t state this more heartily: Legitimately WHAT were the marketing people thinking? 

But trailers that perfectly deliver…it’s like a chef’s kiss. Hereditary, and the marriage between its trailer and the movie…art.