Trailer Cutting Seems to be Getting Worse

I apologize for putting up two posts in one week about the exact same topic, but the epidemic just won't die.  Below, you'll find the trailers for Cabin in the Woods (2012) and Perfect Sense (2012).

Cabin in the Woods is the long-delayed brainchild of Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard.  All we knew about the project was that Whedon was co-writing and it was going to be the horror film to end all horror films, a movie that would function not only as a self-reflexive examination of the whole genre, but also serve as an incredibly scary tale on its own.

But you wouldn't know any of that from the trailer, because they've decided to market it in exactly the same way that every cheap-ass horror flick gets marketed these days.



That's right: a horror movie with a title as self-aware as The Cabin in the Woods gets a marketing campaign that basically boils down to "Look! The promise of jump-scares!"

I'm not saying every horror film trailer has to be self-aware, but when the hook is "We're going to be making fun of while simultaneously working with horror-film archetypes to deliver an engaging story," you can't deliver a trailer that makes the gorram film look like everything else.

Where's the context?  Where's the characterization?  Where are the stakes?  Where is the brilliant genre-specific subterfuge that we all know will be on display throughout the film?  The most we get along those lines is the one interesting part of the entire trailer: "We should split up."  "Yeah, good idea." 

"...Really?"

And then it's back to the mindless montage. 

Then we come to Trailer #2:



This film is about a chef and a scientist who fall in love in the middle of an epidemic which slowly robs people of their five senses, a concept which actually intrigues me more than the thought of watching a topless makeout between Ewan McGregor and Eva Green. 

Did you get any of that from the trailer?  Yeah, me neither.

It seems every genre has its own set of cringe-inducing trailer-cliches.  I smell a definitive post on the subject in the near future!

--Serge