Yo, cut it.
Several trailers for upcoming horror films of note have appeared online in the past few days.
First up is I Am Legend, the Will Smith-starring adaptation of Richard Matheson’s post-vampire-apocalypse novella. It’s actually rather interesting, or at least not annoying, which is what I thought it would be. Obviously showing how things got to the pass we’re at when the novella begins is a big change, as is setting the thing in Manhattan, but neither is necessarily bad, just different. Still, casting Will Smith and spending the amount of money they must have spent on this thing to shoot in New York and close the Brooklyn Bridge and so on would indicate that this is supposed to be a blockbuster, which frequently (though not always) proves inimical to the values that make post-apocalyptic horror interesting in the first place. We’ll see.
Next up is The Invasion, the latest incarnation of the thrice-remade sci-fi apocalyptic paranoia classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. The trailer feels like a misstep to me, showing way too much of the movie and centering on a bored-of-it-already child-in-peril plot. But I’m struck by how much what we see here is indebted to the fast-zombie horror school of 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead, an interesting road to go down for this property. The leads show a lot of promise, of course.
Finally, there’s 30 Days of Night, based on the not actually very good graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith about vampires who besiege a small Alaskan town where the sun won’t come out for another month. The idea behind the book was much better than the book itself, which is why I hold out some hope for the movie, though the trailer comes across as over-the-top and cheesy. Still, that’s what most trailers tend to do, so who knows.
On the lighter side, there’s Fido.
“Not actually very good” = “Fucking awful”
It’s been a while since I read I Am Legend, but Will Smith is an actor I pictured having nothing to do with it.