Tumble
Weinstein Co. is announcing that some kind of official HD trailer for Apollo 18 has debuted on Yahoo…whatever. Speculative NASA fantasy pic (with simulated “actual’ footage) opens wide on 9.2.11. “While NASA denies its authenticity, others say it’s the real reason we’ve never gone back to the moon,” etc.
Man, that looks lame as hell. And I’m someone who has been on board with the “found footage” genre from time to time (thought Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity were damn effective).
Performances look like shit, they apparently give away the entire plot in the preview which is even worse because they seemingly confirm that there’s nothing original or effective in the movie, and what? no explanation for why Apollo 18 wasn’t recognized from the beginning?
Man, that looks lame as hell. And I’m someone who has been on board with the “found footage” genre from time to time (thought Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity were damn effective).
Performances look like shit, they apparently give away the entire plot in the preview which is even worse because they seemingly confirm that there’s nothing original or effective in the movie, and what? no explanation for why Apollo 18 wasn’t recognized from the beginning?
Can’t put my finger on why, but it doesn’t feel authentic. NASA footage from onboard any of the missions back then through to the shuttle and ISS just feels different, and I’m talking about the calm scenes here. Even the everything’s-hunky-dory prelude just feels false.
Plus, I’m sick to death of the video-glitch effect that’s liberally saturating most action/thriller/horror trailers these days. It does not make anything scarier or more intense, or more real, or skew hip. Trailer cutters, editors, don’t make me make a Hitler video on this one. Just stop.
This looks like total shit. When I saw the trailer last month on youtube I figured it was some schlocky $100,000 home movie.
The whole reason Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch project were as effective as they were because A) it never, ever showed the monster, and B) it was about an even that could easily be covered up or not heard about by the general public.
Not only is the monster revealed in the movie, it’s in the fucking trailer. Pathetic. And then the guys gets “infected” by it and starts attacking the other guy? No. Not how to do a horror movie. Even Cloverfield did that right.
It’s easy to say that there’s a local legend about someone (or something) called the Blair Witch that anyone outside the area wouldn’t have heard of. It’s easy to say that one house in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere was haunted and the ghost killed the couple after some freaky shit went down. It’s hard as shit to say that NASA had an extra flight to the moon that was covered up. Why would it be secret prior to launch? Why wouldn’t people in the area say “Yep, I saw a rocket go off. I thought it was strange because they usually warn us about that stuff.” Why did it take 40 years to find the footage?
It could be a well acted, well shot, and well written. But it’s going to suck because there’s so much unbelievability to it, when it’s being sold as “real”.
pushing the release from early ’11 to Sept is wise, consider the good will left by Dark of the Moon … why didn’t they say Dark Side of the Moon, was it a rights prob with Pink Floyd? A whole American Pie shebang where Don McLean got credit for what, writing a song?
A simple google and it refers to the last 3 days of the lunar cycle.
It really bugs me that they put that line “The following footage has not been altered” in the trailer when even the most clueless fifth grader can tell it has CG in it. Also, the image quality is different throughout, giving away its video roots.
It’s a terrific premise, though. I wish they would’ve just made it into a straight horror film. By going the “found footage” route, they’re asking the audience to emotionally rebel against it.
Instead of wasting your time with this, watch Cropsey instead.
That release date is all you need to know that it sucks. As a movie buff with a birthday that usually occurs on or near labor day weekend, I have NEVER seen a good movie that opened near my birthday.
I literally cannot even watch a horror movie anymore that’s NOT a “found footage” type. It is literally impossible for anyone over the age of 13 to be scared by a horror movie, no matter how well-done or effective, if it ISN’T the found footage type, in my opinion. The only way I can even get a tingle is if it’s something like Paranormal Activity, where you can at least START to fool your brain into thinking “ok, this is camcorder, and it looks and sounds and feels real-ish…ok, this is kind of weird and creepy, etc”.
I don’t understand why all horror movies aren’t found-footage now.
Will there ever be a day where we don’t have to suffer from the “narrative text displayed sequentially as if on a computer monitor but with an accompanying mechanical/teletype sound” effect?
ErrantElan’s comment is the scariest thing in this entire post, given what it says about the state of horror films these days.
Yeah, but isn’t he like 20 years old? It might be worth paying attention to– Every time I see a “traditional” horror movie anymore, there’s like four lone guys by themselves in a 300-seat theater. Then you go see “Paranormal” or “Last Exorcism” and it’s like seeing it with a packed high school auditorium, all the kids flipping out and trying to scare each other and acting like dumb-asses.
This trailer just annoys me– it’s so loud and it’s not really anything I care about, so I usually can’t wait for it to end.
Plus it looks like it’ll have a SHITLOAD of chyron and “time and date” stamps, so when I inevitably have to transcribe all those four weeks before this is released for DVD, it’ll be a fucking pain in the ass. More than anything, if only for the purposes of my shitty job, I really miss when EVERY MOVIE wasn’t an immediate avalanche of information with tickers and timestamps and overheard radio broadcasts and news reports playing over the opening credits. All that shit is SUCH a pain in the ass to subtitle.
“Officially Apollo 17 was NASA’s final maned mission to the moon”
Who the fuck wrote that?
A few thoughts:
To echo The Thing — how the hell can they possibly explain the whole “It was a normal mission, but no one ever saw Apollo 18 take off” thing? It’s an effing SATURN V ROCKET — no way people across Florida just somehow didn’t know it took off, much less didn’t know there was another Apollo mission scheduled. Calling it a “true story” is ludicrous.
And how did they get the footage back? It was left on the moon in the LEM — so, there was a secret mission that went up just to retrieve the video and film? And THAT is the real “secret mission”? The trailer’s saying “This is the last manned mission to the moon… and the footage was left there… but we got it back.” Yeah, good luck with that plot point.
Delaying this movie until after Transformers 3 was NOT a stroke of marketing brilliance — it’s stupid. The whole “something’s on the moon and the Apollo missions found it” angle will be played out already… should have stuck to April and beaten Transformers to the punch. Now, after last November’s moon landing and robots teaser, coming almost a year later this looks like a rip-off of a better-executed idea.
Finally: if you’re going to release an HD trailer in June for a movie that got delayed until September… you might want to pay the $1000 to alter the titles that say “Coming in Spring” and still give a release date of April 2011. Most people looking at this — and the crappy video quality of the images — will think “Huh, I didn’t see this direct-to-video thing hit Netflix in April.”
And that’s not even bringing up the shoddy acting, visuals, and creature…
I’m in my 20′s, yes, but you’re missing the point. I actually have disdain for the horror genre in general – as bad as it sounds, I’m pretty snobby about it. Even after watching Psycho, I’m like “that was very well done – for a horror movie”.
That’s the point – the ONLY reason I would EVER watch a horror movie is to actually TRY to be SCARED. And I’m saying well-made, well-filmed horror just can’t be scary to anyone over 12, can it? The aesthetic of “found footage” is just creepy, that’s all I’m saying.
Yes, traditional horror is probably superior in quality to “found footage” movies tend to be(for whatever reasons, that’s another debate). But when people talk about John Carpenter like he’s Stanley fuckin’ Kubrick, I roll my eyes.
@ ErrantElan – But then again, Stanley fuckin’ Kubrick directed what is widely considered to be one of the greatest horror films ever. John Carpenter has two others – Halloween and The Thing.
It’s dismaying to hear you say that about Psycho. You sound like some 18 year olds I know who bad-mouthed Citizen Kane until they had to study it in a film class; once they learned some of what is going on technically and symbolically in that film, they fell in love with it. Psycho isn’t just some “horror movie.”
I can understand if horror films just aren’t your thing. I don’t really like westerns all that much, but I probably watch Unforgiven once a year because it’s more than just some western – it’s a brilliant film, regardless of genre.
The bad thing is that your generation hasn’t had too many really good, high-quality horror films to give you a wider perspective of them. The Ring sucks, and Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity are well done gimmicks.
SAW and HOSTEL rule all.
Horror is the SECOND greatest genre after the romcom in terms of ALWAYS being entertaining.
But some bullshit with astronauts in SPACE isn’t horror.
Also Carpenter is GOD. TAKE A SEAT, Errant.
@ Lex – Saw has a clever twist and some creative traps, but the acting is AWFUL and the direction is RIDICULOUS. I’m not even getting into Hostel.
Are these seriously your two favorite horror films? No Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original)? No Evil Dead?
I didn’t say they were my favorites… I was just saying, among recent horror films, which you had written off somewhat, that I liked Hostel and Saw; Following them and waiting for a new SAW every year, half-knowing how bad it is but half loving the over-the-top silliness and gross-out stuff reminds me of when I was a kid and anxiously awaited each new Freddy and Michael and Jason movie.
Still not on the same wavelength here – “Psycho” and “The Shining” are fantastic films. But they’re not SCARY. AT ALL.
What’s the point of horror if it doesn’t at least haunt you later, in your bed two nights later? The two axed-up twins in The Shining would have LOOKED way scarier if they’d been on realistic camcorder, that’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying The Shining should have been found footage, just that I go to found footage movies to be SCARED (well, as close as can be). The realistic nature of the aesthetics creeps me out, and I think it may be a generational thing I don’t give a shit about artistic value here – that’s not what I’m arguing about.
Oh, and yes, the Ring sucked, but the Japanese original, Ringu, didn’t. And why is that? Because the videotape they’d watch in that one looked MUCH more “real” (i.e. found footage). The video in “The Ring” was fucking Hollywood as hell, and thus, NOT SCARY.
Fuck, I’m DZ now. Lex will hate me for liking an Asian movie.
The Shining is like the ONLY scary movie ever made. I was traumatized by that shit at age 9 and didn’t live it down for two decades.
You’re nuts.
You’re old.
Dude, the idea that you think the Shining Hallway Twins would’ve been more effective if filmed by a fucking CAMCORDER is one of the ten stupidest things ever spoken on this blog. I get roasted every time I say anything even 1/1000000th as blasphemous as that.
And, gee, let me guess you “got into” movies like three years ago, and NETFLIXED all of them, including The Shining, and saw it once and only once via a paper sleeve in like 2008.
Stop posting, it’s an insult to anyone who comes here.
That fucking Hitchcock– Should’ve shot the shower scene on a webcam like Halloween: Resurrection and left a timestamp in the corner so Erant Ellen knows it’s real.
What planet am I on here! Is this some cosmic revenge for everyone having to read my anti-cartoon posts for years?
Errant is nuts! Nuts I tell you! If this weren’t a lazy Saturday and the rest of the world didn’t have better things to do than debate off-topic nonsense in a 36-hour-old thread about a stupid looking movie, I can guarantee I’d be getting… three, four people backing me up on this and shaming this kid into BOWING to the magic of Kubrick’s best movie.
The Ring blows away Ringu. No debate.
Among recent horrors, Orphan was pretty good.
Orphan was very good, Insidious was a lot of fun and a PERFECT EXAMPLE of how that kind of thing can be done well as a “real movie.” For the record, I liked Paranormal 2 a lot… the first one was okay, too, so I’m not anti- that kind of thing, it’s just getting one-note to me. Oh, I liked Quarantine, too.
And Last Exorcism featured a bang-up lead performance by Craig Kilborn, but it wasn’t scary.
>And I’m saying well-made, well-filmed horror just can’t be scary to anyone over 12, can it?
Obviously it can, as I’ve been scared after the age of 12 by good “traditional” horror films. Your next step will be to say that there is something wrong with adults who are scared by non-found-footage movies — since that is your real point, you might as well have gone right to it without the smokescreen of “objective reportage” or whatever you’re trying to do.
Apart from some fetishistic preference that you have, the only advantage I can see to found-footage is that it ostensibly has a heightened sense of suspension of disbelief, because it “could” be real. But exactly the same perspective could be applied to any genre. Don’t laugh at a comedy, don’t get drawn into the characters in a drama, because it’s all obviously fiction and you can see how they have to keep cutting between different cameras and it was assembled from multiple takes and yada yada.
If people become so meta and self-aware when it comes to cinema that they can’t watch anything that wasn’t shot in a single take on an iPhone without failing to suspend disbelief, it will be a pity, as it will eliminate vast swaths of the filmmaker’s available toolbox. And it will be a sign, not of greater sophistication in audiences, but of inferior imagination.
I think there’s a difference between “scary” and “disturbing.” I feel like [Rec] falls in the camp of the former (surprised to see nobody give it any love here, although to be fair Quarantine is basically the same flick…only not quite as good), whereas The Shining falls into the latter category.
But The Shining has literally SO much more going on — that whole slaughtered Indian subtext (which only enhances its creepiness), the darkly hilarious id-driven lines of dialogue, those cutting-edge (at the time) Steadicam shots, a powerhouse Nicholson performance — that its genre is almost beside the point (besides, any true cineaste knows the primary genre it takes is KUBRICK FILM).
I love the Hostels, too, but I’ve already spilled way too much time and ink on here in a futile attempt to defend them. I’ll just say that I think they’re best approached as social commentaries — and not movies that will necessarily “scare” or “disturb” you — and leave it at that.
“And it will be a sign, not of greater sophistication in audiences, but of inferior imagination.”
Well said, bluefugue. Now having said that, I can totally see how ErrantElan doesn’t find Psycho “scary,” but certainly that wasn’t Hitchcock’s ONLY intended endgame! He’s always traded in the push-pull between of story information between the director and audience (one should never forget the “bomb under the table” analogy he gives Truffaut.).
So the “problem” with Psycho, at least as far as younger people/modern audiences will diagnose it as such, is that it’s mainly predicated on trying to “surprise” us with misdirection and subverting filmmaking tropes. After 50 full years of “shock cinema” since, I think it’s really unrealistic to expect it have the exact same effect when it was released.
I’d recommend taking another look — or a first look if you’ve never seen — Rear Window, which is a movie that leans much more towards the suspense end of things, which is a quality I think holds up much better today if only because fewer auteurs have shown an interest in suspense, let alone a predilection for doing it well (Polanski was excellent at it, Tarantino used it as his bread and butter in all the major scenes of Inglourious Basterds).
I’m 29, almost 30, and went to film school. Not saying that means much intrinsically, but I’ve seen 90% of the top 100 of the last Sight and Sound poll (’02, I believe). And yes, I did Netflix most of them – something wrong with that?
I first saw “The Shining” in…oh, probably 1995. I’ve said several times that I think it’s a fantastic film, and I’m the one who said comparing John Carpenter to Stanley Kubrick is ridiculous. I worship Kubrick, and have since I was an early teen.
The Shining isn’t scary. All I said. LexG can’t read. It’s weird. Dude, don’t even reference me again.
And for the record, CitizenKaned gets what I’ve been saying. Just because I didn’t take he time to list out the elements that make “The Shining” a great film doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them – it’s fucking Stanley Kubrick, it’s just a given.
Rear Window vs. Psycho is an excellent case study of what I’m talking about, because while Psycho has many great elements to it, I simply think that its being in the horror genre hurts it because it DOES spend too much time and effort trying to be SCARY, and for many reasons (simple passage of time and changing of tastes, be it for good or bad), it ISNT scary. It doesn’t hold up as well as, say, a Rear Window, because even a lesser suspense movie is, on average, going to hold up better than a superior “horror” movie that just wastes too much effort on trying to make people go “OMG!” but can’t have the same effect 50 years later.
How on Earth is “Psycho” supposed to scare somebody today when it’s so old, in black and white, and probably been ripped off by what, thousands of subsequent movies over the years? I’d be truly shocked if somebody saw it in 2011 and was actually scared by it. I’m not saying it isn’t a great movie still, just that something that’s over fifty years old that’s been referenced to DEATH a million times over is hardly the example you want to be knocking back and forth in this argument.
Yeah, Psycho isn’t scary at all. Even the twist isn’t very good, and it’s been parodied so many times the effect is lost. It’s a better mystery than it is horror.
Jaws is probably the scariest movie because the fear of sharks is real and everyone is wary of it when they’re near any body of water.
“Jaws is probably the scariest movie because the fear of sharks is real and everyone is wary of it when they’re near any body of water.”
You are clearly under the age of 40, Rashad — speaking from experience, before JAWS, no one gave *any* thought to shark attacks. Even people who lived near the beach! It’s only a testament to just how HUGE that movie was back in 1975, and what a complete cultural phenomenon it was at the time.
If anything, the fear you’re thinking of that everyone has isn’t “fear of sharks” — it’s fear of the unknown (in this case, represented by the water). If you go swimming in the ocean, or any large body of water, for that matter… just what’s underneath you, where you can’t see? THAT’S what’s inherently scary about it. It’s like being afraid of the dark — there’s something very primal about the fact that you can’t see what’s near you. (And that’s another reason why Spielberg lucked out when the mechanical shark didn’t work)
No, I’m afraid of getting eaten by a shark. The depth of the ocean is a whole other matter. It is a real fear for people anywhere. Once you see that fin you know there’s trouble
But that’s the point, Rashad — sharks don’t come at you at surface level, as you watch their dorsal fins glide toward you. They pull you down from below.
The whole conceit that “once you see that fin you know there’s trouble” is due to Jaws… mainly since that’s the only way Spielberg could convey the shark approaching (at least when he wasn’t showing the shark’s POV). You do realize that’s not what happens in real life, right? (Ironically the opening attack during the night swim WAS more accurate… because you couldn’t see the fin in the dark anyway, so Spielberg went solely POV before she got pulled around and eventually dragged under.)
And I guarantee you that before 1975, “shark attacks” weren’t a topic of conversation, they didn’t show up in list of things that scared people, and so on. It was due to the movie.
Rashad — given the content of your posts here and elsewhere (like Slashfilm), you should be much more afraid of jumping the shark.
“Rear Window”? You obviously mean that boring old movie that ripped off “Disturbia”…which was MUCH more believable ’cause it included time-stamped “surveillance” footage and net-cam footage which meant it was TOTES believable to me…like, it really happened.
Elan; “I don’t understand why all horror movies aren’t found-footage now. ”
I just don’t understand, Elan…do you, like, *hypnotize* yourself before each “Cloverfield” type movie, to fool yourself into thinking “this time, maybe the “found footage” is really, truly “found footage”!”
Have you also written off fantasy and sci-fi films? Speculative period pieces? Alternate histories? Animation? 99% of these don’t have “this is *true*!” framing/marketing gimmicks. And yet, many of them seem to do quite well indeed, creatively and/or in ticket-sales.
What a waste of a film-school education…and cramming everything in by netflix since ’95. Ugh. That’s why the best historically just “go and shoot”,
MrF
Finally: if you’re going to release an HD trailer in June for a movie that got delayed until September… you might want to pay the $1000 to alter the titles that say “Coming in Spring” and still give a release date of April 2011. Most people looking at this — and the crappy video quality of the images — will think “Huh, I didn’t see this direct-to-video thing hit Netflix in April.”
That’s afraction of what it costs to “fix” and redistribute….and this is the Weinstein company. They don’t have the $, or desire to spend it, on such trivial promotion…which people don’t really even give as much thought to as you imagine.
“A simple google and it refers to the last 3 days of the lunar cycle”.
No, (unsurprisingly) Rashad. “Simple” is correct, with you, though. That’s not the reference – astronomic – the phrase is making. It’s the (ancient) POETIC usage that it’s utilizing: “the mysterious, *unknowable* side of something extremely familiar, seen every day”, with the twist that the object in the film is *actually* the moon.
This is really the same poetic allusion that PF was making with “The Dark Side of the Moon” in title and concept. However, if Dreamworks wished to add “Side of”, it would very likely lead to infringement suits/payoff money from Capitol records & PF. Its just a wise choice to sidestep that problem entire when the phrase they chose is older, shorter, and means the exact same thing.
Rashad – there will be no reference to the “last 3 days of the lunar calendar”, idiot.
Expecting to grasp a concept entire through a Google Search is analogous to “watching” a movie by reading about it on imdb. Which we expect from you too.
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I totally believe that I’m someone who has been on board with the “found footage” genre from time to time (thought Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity were damn effective).
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