Movies
Bad Science: Are Horror Movie Trailers Getting Scarier?
There’s a new video making the rounds that poses the question, are horror movie trailers getting scarier?
Vocativ showed ten people two horror film trailers, one classic and one modern. Using data from heart rate tracing wrist bands and facial emotion detection software, they analyzed the viewers reaction to see if they could tell which were scarier.
At the end of the above video they share their results: “On average, our viewers heart rate was higher at the end of the modern trailer.”
I think this is a really fun experiment, although the science behind it is flawed, and I hate that people are immediately piggy-backing these results as if they proved something. They didn’t.
First of all, older horror films and their trailers can feel dated, especially to younger viewers. The easiest point I can make here is to point you to this old article in which I ask, is the Lumiere Brothers’ silent short film, “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” (“The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station”), the scariest movie ever made?
The 1896 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière shows a train pulling into La Ciotat Station.
Over 100 years ago, this short film was so realistic that theatergoers would panic and run out of the theater because they legitimately thought the train was going to crash into them. To a modern audience, this looks like nothing more than stock footage. Does this mean that a shot of a train crashing in HD is scarier than this short?
The point is, this experiment is highly flawed, although it’s fun to see how trailers have changes over the years and how studios are forced to change how they sell a movie. Are modern trailers scarier than the ones we grew up on? You know, it’s quite possible. Back in the day, it was all about star power, while now you’ll see a lot more “jump scares” crammed into a 30-second spot.
What do you guys think? Are there any older horror trailers that you think are still terrifying? Remember the rarely seen trailer for The Exorcist that was once deemed too disturbing for audiences?
Movies
’28 Years Later’ – Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson Join Long Awaited Sequel
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (Annihilation, Men), the director and writer behind 2002’s hit horror film 28 Days Later, are reteaming for the long-awaited sequel, 28 Years Later. THR reports that the sequel has cast Jodie Comer (Alone in the Dark, “Killing Eve”), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), and Ralph Fiennes (The Menu).
The plan is for Garland to write 28 Years Later and Boyle to direct, with Garland also planning on writing at least one more sequel to the franchise – director Nia DaCosta is currently in talks to helm the second installment.
No word on plot details as of this time, or who Comer, Taylor-Johnson, and Fiennes may play.
28 Days Later received a follow up in 2007 with 28 Weeks Later, which was executive produced by Boyle and Garland but directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Now, the pair hope to launch a new trilogy with 28 Years Later. The plan is for Garland to write all three entries, with Boyle helming the first installment.
Boyle and Garland will also produce alongside original producer Andrew Macdonald and Peter Rice, the former head of Fox Searchlight Pictures, the division of one-time studio Twentieth Century Fox that originally backed the British-made movie and its sequel.
The original film starred Cillian Murphy “as a man who wakes up from a coma after a bicycle accident to find England now a desolate, post-apocalyptic collapse, thanks to a virus that turned its victims into raging killers. The man then navigates the landscape, meeting a survivor played by Naomie Harris and a maniacal army major, played by Christopher Eccleston.”
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) is on board as executive producer, though the actor isn’t set to appear in the film…yet.
Talks of a third installment in the franchise have been coming and going for the last several years now – at one point, it was going to be titled 28 Months Later – but it looks like this one is finally getting off the ground here in 2024 thanks to this casting news. Stay tuned for more updates soon!
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