Movie Trailer Analysis
Eric Arnesen
4/12/15
ERH-206WX
Maj. Knepper
Horror movies invoke the natural emotion of fear into many of us when we see them. A
large part of getting the public to see their movie is in the development of a trailer that invokes
this fear but also creates a sense of curiosity in what actually happens in the movie. This concept
can be applied to almost any horror movie but its origins seem to come from the Gothic period of
American Literature. With this in mind, we can draw many parallels between the present day and
the past when it comes to scaring people. A movie trailer that portrays this accurately is
Unfriended; a movie that will come out on April 17, 2015.
The trailer starts out very calm, with relaxing music and pictures/videos from various
places on the internet. Claiming “Online, your memories last forever,” while showing many
happy events such as birthdays, weddings, and a child’s first time riding a bike, the trailer
catches the person off guard and draws them into being interested into the movie. Much like the
introduction into the The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne, this trailer stars out with
everything optimistic and life going on as normal. Knowing that it is a horror movie however,
there is an air of suspense waiting for something to happen.
The trailer then takes a turn towards the worse. The screen shows less than a 5 second
clip of what appears to be a teenage party with the quote following the quote in the prior
paragraph, “But so do your mistakes.” Following this the party scene reappears and turns sour
for a certain girl who appears to be acting very promiscuous. Upon being cyber-bullied about the
video the girl commits suicide.
A year after the shooting, a group of friends are getting on the video-chat application
Skype where an unknown visitor is joining them. After trying to get the visitor to leave the chat,
it messages them wanting to know who posted the video of the girl at the party. The visitor then
causes random things to happen to the group including turning the lights off, having one step into
oncoming traffic, and one who seems to lose all sense of himself and sticks his hand in a blender.
This trailer is a great example of the use of the uncanny: the way of making the familiar,
unfamiliar or frightening. By starting off with videos and images of good things the internet
provides to us, the trailer catches us in a blissful state of agreement for most of us use the internet
for posting things that make us happy. Catching us off guard, the trailer turns the internet into a
scary frightening place for us to take part in. Much like the use of the uncanny in Gothic
literature, the trailer proves that the standards for horror set back then are still relevant in the
present day.