Editorials
[BEST & WORST ’11] The Worst Trailers of the Year!
Most of these are trailers for films so bad there’s simply no way to cull two minutes of footage from them and make them look good. Though many of them try, they fail and end up as middling pieces of marketing.
Then there are the ones who seem to know just how bad the film is, as if the guy cutting the trailer realized that people were going to waste actual money to see this thing if he did his job properly and “saved the film”.
This dude – let’s call him “Hero” – looks like he cut some of these teasers, valiantly laying his job on the line to tell us to avoid these movies.
Check out some truly bad trailers after the jump! 
Micah (Best/Worst) | Lonmonster (Best/Worst) | Evan Dickson (Best/Worst) | Lauren Taylor (Best/Worst)
Posters (Best/Worst) | Trailers (Best/Worst) | Performances (Best)
For about 30 seconds this trailer almost manages to make us forget that we’re watching an advertisement for something as stupid as a found footage movie on the moon. And then it hits us, it’s indeed a found footage movie on the moon. What’s wrong with that? Well, it takes a normally visually static genre and makes it even more static. Also, the concept alone takes the single best weapon in the found footage arsenal – the feeling that this could happen to you – and completely removes it by making it about astronauts 250,000 miles away. There’s no polishing a turd, and this trailer proves it.
Holy crap this just gives me flashbacks to the early-mid 1990’s when horror movies were just boring as sh*t. Adding Anthony Hopkins only makes it worse because, even though he was in the best horror film of that era, he’s also king of the paycheck and has been in his share of middling garbage. It’s a bad association to bring into the most boring genre of horror – the religious thriller. There’s only been like four good ones, and the The Rite ain’t one of them.
I actually liked Scream 4 more than many of my contemporaries/colleagues. It’s by no means anywhere as good as the first film, but it escapes the godawful shenanigans of Scream 3 by a wide margin. Sure it has its share of stupid moments, but if you don’t think Scream 2 had those I’d suggest thinking long and hard about who the killer in that movie was.
Sadly, the trailer for Scream 4 was everything its critics (somewhat rightfully) accused the movie of being. Overly referential, reflexively mistaking “meta” with “clever” and just generally being super annoying. It had none of the occasionally nice character moments or brutality that the film used to dilute its own worst ideas.
While I included the poster for Red State as one of my bests of the year, that’s about as far as I can go in terms of love for the film or anything related to it. All this trailer does is expose just how much Smith is treading water in terms of his development as a visual director while somehow regressing dramatically as a writer. Seeing the actual film, which includes several seemingly full length sermons from Michael Parks, only compounds the issue.
Earlier this year I took part in a roundtable interview with director James McTeigue. When I asked him how he was going to differentiate the film from Sherlock Holmes this was his response, “We’re a much different beast… We’re about as close to ‘Sherlock Holmes’ as ‘Transformers’ is.
He might want to call the marketing department and let them know.
Even though this Straw Dogs remake was unnecessary, it was far from being a truly bad movie. But this trailer that tries to recontextualize the whole thing into a modern, almost Texas Chainsaw remake, “check out how hardcore things are gonna get” piece is borderline offensive. It also completely misrepresents the film.
Almost as inept as the film itself (and this trailer includes almost as many blank frames as it does images! Perhaps an homage to the film’s off-camera climax), this is fairly upfront about how visually flat and boring the film is. It’s also honest about how not scary and unfunny the film is. Being honest about the shortcomings of Creature is an admirably brave, yet fatal, mistake.
Quick question – has a movie ever been made to look less interesting than Priest? I’d say no. I didn’t see the film and this trailer is largely responsible for that. If somehow the actual feature managed to be interesting at all, let me know in the comments.
I’ve seen Syfy trailers that play their cards closer to the chest in terms of how crappy their film is. Christ.
You know how in Tropic Thunder Ben Stiller played a character named Tug Speedman who starred in the godawful ‘Scorcher” franchise? “Scorcher” only wishes it looked as hilariously bad as Season Of The Witch. Kids, this is what happens when you spend all of your money on castles before remembering to pay your taxes. You have to make Season Of The Witch.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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