Was I the only one who fell for the Bill Skarsgard casting trap? That first hour had me tense! Not a perfect film just because it really got reachy with the lame ass “No! We have to back and save him” stupidity - one of THE laziest tropes. Aside from that it had me locked in most of the way.
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The marketing for the movie was pretty great at making you think Skarsgard was the antagonist.
Whoever edited the Abigail trailer could have learned a lesson from this movie.
I love having 90% of a 90 minute movie shown to me in the trailer./s
I think we have to stop calling them ‘trailers’ and start calling them ‘summaries’
Its why i dont watch trailers after the first one
I noticed that when I watched Abigail this weekend. It was still a pretty fun watch though.
Same, thought it was pretty good. Will watch again in the future.
Still it would have been a bit better if they hadn't completely destroyed the red herrings the movie tries to build.
I didn't watch the trailer and had a blast. I try to avoid them as majority give away the film in 2 minutes
Sometimes it pays off. The Southpaw trailer eliminated any need for me to spend money seeing the actual movie; they must have had CliffsNotes edit the trailer.
For real. Decent movie with no surprises left
I don’t know how you could advertise the film without showing she’s a vampire at least. Otherwise you’d have to sell the film on just being a bunch of people kidnapping a little girl.
They showed way more than just her being a vampire in the trailers
Use the trailer as-is right up until the point where Abigail tells Joey that she's sorry for what's about to happen to her. Then cut to some quick flashes of the kidnappers running around, shouting, bloody, etc. That way viewers know something is up and Abigail isn't as afraid as you'd expect a kidnapped kid to be. But leave some of the mystery.
Lean into the Keyser Soze trick they were trying to pull, show Melissa Barrera asking how to kill a vampire, and show some gore without an actual kill.
If the film is called Abigail, most people are going to assume it’s her.
The trailer can have had them kidnapping the girl but also having to protect her and themselves as they fend off some kind of attack.
But also, there's a writing fail here if the film or its title can't be conveyed in a way without giving so much of the film away.
It’s not “so much of the film”, it’s the literal premise; People are hired to kidnap a little girl, little girl is a vampire. Saying it’s a writing fail that such a thing can’t be hidden is like saying it’s writing fail that the IT movies couldn’t hide that there’s a monster clown in the sewers.
It’s not remotely the same thing as Barbarian where so much of the film is meant to be a slowly unraveling mystery.
I've been thinking about this, I think the move would have been to sell the mystery itself, like the fact that there is a twist. Only show the set up but then include clips of the characters clearly reacting to SOMETHING crazy happening. include pull quotes from festival screenings where people went in blind that allude to how wild the turn is. Put a tagline in to not have it spoiled. I think if you only saw that it was a crime movie you wouldnt guess "the little girls a vampire" and pushing that theres a fun twist that could be spoiled might actually eventize the movie and get people to go out for it. More than just dumping the whole plot and reveal in the trailer
IMO way less people (and it wasn't much of a success regardless) would have seen it if they just advertised it is a crime/kidnapping movie with a twist. Barbarian you could sell it as a horror film with something in the basement.
Thankfully, I only saw the trailer after watching the movie. Holy shit who thought it was a good idea to show all that in the trailer?!
Think they had a choice with Abigail....
Trailer doesn't reveal anything, just people getting scared hunted in the house and they've kidnapped a young girl.
Or
Trailer goes for the younger action crowd. The young girls a vampire. Look at her teeth and jumping around IE No slower reveal, it's on straight from the off
So creeping dread horror movie or it's a young girl is a vampire film.
In my opinion, the former would have been better. Is it the girls father hunting them? A who done it, with reveal towards the end
I enjoyed it for what it was. Dan Stevens and Kevin Durand are always good value.
Dude I didn't realize this after seeing it. Someone mentioned it and I watched the trailer and it gives away so so much.
Abigail's trailer was the reason I watched it. The barbarian trailer didn't get me interested in the movie even though when I did watch it way past its release, I really liked it.
That's a fantasy movie...not a horror flic right?
The vampire movie?
Ahh, there are two movies with the same name.
i loved abigail but wish they didn’t reveal so much in the trailer :/
True, and they could haveframed Carlos Esposito, Kevin Durand, or Dan Stevens as the primary antagonists.
The marketing was great at making you think you were just going to get one movie instead of three
And I still feel like maybe he didn't really book that air bnb and something else was going on... but died before we could find out.
Didn’t she check his booking and it checked out? Things like this do happen, whether by accident or on purpose. I have a friend who got to their AirBnB and there was already someone in there - the owner of the place. It turns out, the ex had listed the place on AirBnB.
Didn't even need to market it I saw him and started thinking of pennywise, and thought surely he is up to no good😭
No im sorry. Maybe I saw a different trailer or something but the marketing for the movie ruined the entire film. It effectively shows Skarsgard isn’t the antagonist
bill’s performance was fantastic. loved the unsettling feeling— kinda reminds me of the premise of steven yeun’s character in burning!
I haven't watched Burning yet! Thanks for reminding me about it.
it is sooooo good. enjoy your watch!!
I went into the movie pretty blind and I was really absorbed in the tension about whether he was the villain or just a normal dude having trouble not coming off like a creep. That was what I enjoyed most about the movie.
The cut to Justin long driving down the PCH to Ricki ticki tavi is one of the all time great movie cuts ever.
Justin Long measuring the dungeon in the basement and trying to add it to the listing was perfect comedic relief.
One of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a horror movie. I was not expecting him to pull out the tape measurer.
That was so great. It says a lot about the female (feels unsafe) reaction vs male (feels safe) reaction.
I appreciated that.
Would you rather be trapped in that basement with the Barbarian or a bear? 🤣
That snick sound from the tape measurer too... perfection.
Yes! The cut was so good! I really enjoyed the movie and the Skarsgård casting reminded me slightly of the first Scream movie casting Drew Barrymore as the fake MC.
I thought my streaming service had errored or I'd pushed a "next' button and was watching something else by accident when it happened. I stopped to rewind the movie.
Happened to me twice when I watched it. First with Justin Long, second with the flashback to the '50s. I wasn't paying a ton of attention when I watched it so I had to watch it again to make sense of it.
I watched it completely blind. I thought it was a different movie that I apparently imagined existed. I loved it. Yeah, the end is kind of dumb, but, then again, the whole movie is full of odd turns and weirdness so why not just keep it going. Heck, it should have ended with an alien space ship full of the cast of Friends landing in the street and they all start dancing the Macarena. Just go all out. Fade to black with the theme song to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse playing.
Now that would have been cool.
Laugh out loud funny cut given the context of the prior scene
I agree.
I went to see this movie because I liked the poster a lot. No idea what it was about at all, I didn't even see a single trailer. It was one of my best experience in a movie theater.
Since then I try to be more spontaneous when I decide to watch a movie. No more trailers, I didn't look for reviews and ratings.
If I watch one, I watch like the first 20%-50% of a trailer. Just to get a general vibe and see how the production looks.
Honestly same, went in completely blind and had an absolute blast. That scene going down the stairs of the basement for the first time had me at the edge of my seat
I enjoyed that part also, but honestly, that's kinda more of a trope than the bait and switch - look at Skeet Ulrich's Billy in Scream, and John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane. Behind the Mask and Tucker and Dale vs Evil kind of parodies it lol
It was definitely a bait and switch simply because of the way they marketed the movie.
You'll get no argument from me that it's a bait and switch film, but if they marketed the film a different way, they'd be giving away the twist, and arguably the thing that separates it from the crowd lol.
Yeah I really enjoyed that part of the movie. Didn’t like when it moved past that so much.
That part where he's like "do I look like a monster?".. I felt so dumb when I realised all this was deliberate. Damn it.
Is it a trope? I can't really think of many films that pulled the bait and switch in the way Barbarian did. I get why some people prefer the first half, which took itself much more seriously, but at the same time I enjoyed the tonal shift and thought Justin Long was great, as always. The only film I can think of that does what this film did is From Dusk til Dawn.
The trailers for Hereditary made it look like a run of the mill familial haunting.
Sure, but there was no tonal shift in the film itself, like Barbarian, which goes from taut suspense to campy comedy-horror. FDtD does the same thing; serious gangster kidnapping into campy vampire comedy horror.
You are absolutely correct, idk why I was thinking trailer wise like subverting your expectations. The second story in Barbarian is very different tonally. It worked for me though.
The first part is intense and super stressful, but the second part is pretty great too even though it's lighter.
I totally agree - it does feel like two halves of different films mashed together, but for me I kinda loved it for doing that and subverting my expectations
lol I remember thinking “is this supposed to be a horror, or a comedy” when I was eleven years old watching this, and the scene comes on where they flash to the band and someone is playing a mutilated corpse like a banjo
That whole bar scene is amazing.
The bar scene in From Dusk Til Dawn?
Yeah man he means the last 80% of the film after they arrive
Malignant kinda does it.
That's very true, though Idk if Malignant starts out quite as seriously. Still, idk if three out of the thousands of horror films makes it a "lazy trope". Personally I quite like films that switch expectations on us mid-way - Bone Tomahawk is a good example of a film where the first half is typical western and then flips the script mid-film and changes into the horror genre.
Malignant definitely starts out with a very campy, almost parody-esque vibe. Aren't they literally inside a huge stone research laboratory on a stormy cliffside?
Fun Fact! Zach Cregger - creator of Barbarian auditioned for the role of the guy who uhhh... YOU KNOW... His telling of the story is great.
Haha, that's interesting and I'll have to look it up! Ty for the info!
https://youtu.be/Jfi_bSfk14k?si=Gt_Of3rs7UbrCYTg
Such another great experience. I was watching this movie, and I was starting to lose patience because of the dumbness of it, then you realize it's not a traditional horror movie and you enjoy the ride.
Similar to the orphan and (in my opinion) the Pope's exorcist.
I think the "lazy trope" they're referring to is not the tone switch its the characters continuously returning to the house. Hence the "we have to go back and save him"
Ah, that makes more sense, but to be fair, isn't that what a lot of people would actually do? Idk if abandoning the house is massively original - we see that in a lot of films also where characters leave and say they'll get help - it usually doesn't work out well for the people they're trying to help lol.
Honestly it's probably getting harder and harder to write a truly original story, as more films are made - chances are no matter what writers come up with, it's been done before
There are no original stories there are just stories people prefer and ignore the tropes of.
Facts.
Martyrs is one, which imo the film felt inspired by.
I adore Martyrs and Barbarian, but it's not til you said that that I clocked the influence.
Justin always cooks in horror
Totally agree - if he's in it I'll watch it
that was kind of the point.
wild how many supposed horror movie fans completely misunderstood Barbarian