An Intriguing Case of 3 Bad Movie Trailers…and All Are Guilty.

We’ve got three bad trailers today, two for flicks I have little interest in, and one for a flick that I am very interested in, but alas, it is also bad.

Baby Driver (June 28, 2017)

Edgar Wright’s new flick has already had a couple trailers released for it, as well as a release date change (moved up from August), and today we get the trailer with all the critic praise included in it (one assumes these opinions come from those who saw it at this year’s SXSW). Of course, everything that the critics have to say is hyperbolic to the enth degree, and the trailer has a huge money shot of its claim that it is “100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes” (as if that means anything). While I am a huge fan of Edgar Wright’s earlier work, he is certainly rubbing me the wrong way these days (and he used to know how to rub me the right way). Everything about Baby Driver just seems over written and over directed, and like it is trying so hard to be cool. Can’t we just know we aren’t cool, but that we are still awesome and fun to be around, and then make stuff like Spaced and Shaun of the Dead?

Murder on the Orient Express (November 10, 2017)

The new film from the distinguished jobber Sir(?) Kenneth Branagh is a remake of an old film, which is an adaption of an old book, an old book which has been adapted a few times for television. I am not sure who green lit a Poirot film for the 10s, but they clearly assume that there is a demand for Poirot, given the trailer’s hero shot reveal of the character (after an intriguing sequence of “Poirot vision”). Straight up, this is one of the worst trailers that I have seen in a while, and it does nothing except for show us the characters, and promise a mediocre movie. Even if you want to classify this as a teaser, this just isn’t tantalizing or engaging in any way. It feels like a trailer that was created by a robot made to create trailers. The robot that made this trailer was probably doing a robot dance when it included the song by Imagine Dragons at the end…

It Comes At Night (June 9, 2017)

Here at HTR we think A24 is A-wesome, but what we assume is the final trailer for It Comes At Night is a serious misfire. The very short trailer (though it feels long) is going all Saul Bass on us, and incorporating a collage aesthetic with quotes from famous folks intersecting them. Compared to the first trailer, this one just doesn’t cut it. Real talk, A24 shouldn’t have released this trailer, and instead released another trailer for David Lowrey’s upcoming A Ghost Story.