Movies
[BEST & WORST ’12] The Worst Trailers Of The Year!
If you’re reading this, perhaps you read my post about the year’s best trailers. Now it’s time to bring the hammer down on the worst. Like I’ve said before, marketing is an art form, and it’s just as eligible for appraisal as the product its selling.
The majority of these are from correspondingly awful movies, but occasionally you get that rare nugget of a trailer that’s actually for a good movie that it can’t seem to sell it at all. We’ve got a couple of those in here as well.
Head inside for the worst trailers of the year (in no particular order)!
Posters (Best/Worst) | Trailers (Best/Worst)
THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET
To be fair, whoever cut this didn’t have much to work with. But still, they could have gone with a “less is more” approach. They manage to show you the whole movie in 2 minutes yet it still feels like the entire 90.
TOTAL RECALL
Total Recall wasn’t the worst movie of the year, but it was bland, boring and mainly consisted of Colin Farrell jumping onto things. This trailer is actually fairly accurate, perhaps they should have lied to us.
DETENTION
I really loved Detention but the movie was impossible to sell. There’s no way to give any indication of what the experience is like without seeing the entire movie. The trailer makes it look cloying and the jokes land with a thud, proving that with some films context is everything. You can’t blame the person who made this trailer, they had an impossible job.
GONE
It’s just like the movie, but without the “Wes Bentley goes to get soup for his mom” subplot that kept me hanging on during the theatrical experience.
WRONG TURN 5: BLOODLINES
A movie so bad they could only find 34 seconds of stuff to put in the trailer. It’s also strange that they’d go with the “you’re in the wrong f*cking theater” angle since this was a direct to DVD/Blu release.
WORLD WAR Z
I’m still holding out hope that World War Z is fantastic. It totally could be (and trailers for movies like this notoriously have unfinished CGI in them). But man this thing landed with a thud. It stripped the mystique away from this legendarily troubled project without giving us anything to chew on in return.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ASYLUM – Teasers 1-18
Thanks for these, FX. Good show though!!
HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS
I know a lot of you dig this one, but all it really tells me is “Van Helsing meets Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Which is not what I wanted to hear.
ROSEWOOD LANE
Seriously, did this convince any of you to see this movie? If so, please let me know why. Legit question.
DRACULA 3D
This is made all the more painful by the fact that it’s directed by Dario freakin’ Argento.
Movies
‘Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons Is No Fan of Generative AI: “Defeats the Purpose Entirely for Me”
There has been a lot of talk recently about filmmakers embracing generative AI as part of the filmmaking process, from Darren Aronofsky to Martin Scorsese. But what about filmmakers that are against the use of Gen AI for creative pursuits? You can count 20-year-old Backrooms director Kane Parsons among that group, which should give you some hope for the future.
In a new chat with The Australian, the self-taught young filmmaker makes it crystal clear that he won’t be using generative AI in any of his upcoming filmmaking projects.
“I think I’m in the same boat as most well-adjusted people,” Parsons tells the outlet. “If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”
“What interests me more is interrogating it artistically,” Parsons notes. “We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop. That’s become part of our visual reality. To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot.”
He explains, “I’m interested in using that iconography in art – not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents. I definitely want to explore it further in future projects.”
Kane Parsons also notes during the interview with The Australian, “… there’s so much at stake and so many genuinely harmful consequences already happening.”
Backrooms marks young prodigy Kane Parsons’ feature directorial debut, and it’s based on his own series of YouTube videos that were brought to life using Blender, the open-source 3D computer graphics software suite. So it’s no surprise that Parsons, who has hand-made his filmmaking career up to this point, isn’t buying into the hoopla around Generative AI.
His debut feature is the #1 movie in the world, so perhaps he’s onto something.
What’s next from Kane Parsons, you ask? Stay tuned…
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