For about 30 seconds this trailer almost manages to make us forget that we’re watching an advertisement for something as stupid as a found footage movie on the moon. And then it hits us, it’s indeed a found footage movie on the moon. What’s wrong with that? Well, it takes a normally visually static genre and makes it even more static. Also, the concept alone takes the single best weapon in the found footage arsenal – the feeling that this could happen to you – and completely removes it by making it about astronauts 250,000 miles away. There’s no polishing a turd, and this trailer proves it.

Holy crap this just gives me flashbacks to the early-mid 1990’s when horror movies were just boring as sh*t. Adding Anthony Hopkins only makes it worse because, even though he was in the best horror film of that era, he’s also king of the paycheck and has been in his share of middling garbage. It’s a bad association to bring into the most boring genre of horror – the religious thriller. There’s only been like four good ones, and the The Rite ain’t one of them.

I actually liked Scream 4 more than many of my contemporaries/colleagues. It’s by no means anywhere as good as the first film, but it escapes the godawful shenanigans of Scream 3 by a wide margin. Sure it has its share of stupid moments, but if you don’t think Scream 2 had those I’d suggest thinking long and hard about who the killer in that movie was.

Sadly, the trailer for Scream 4 was everything its critics (somewhat rightfully) accused the movie of being. Overly referential, reflexively mistaking “meta” with “clever” and just generally being super annoying. It had none of the occasionally nice character moments or brutality that the film used to dilute its own worst ideas.

While I included the poster for Red State as one of my bests of the year, that’s about as far as I can go in terms of love for the film or anything related to it. All this trailer does is expose just how much Smith is treading water in terms of his development as a visual director while somehow regressing dramatically as a writer. Seeing the actual film, which includes several seemingly full length sermons from Michael Parks, only compounds the issue.

Earlier this year I took part in a roundtable interview with director James McTeigue. When I asked him how he was going to differentiate the film from Sherlock Holmes this was his response, “We’re a much different beast… We’re about as close to ‘Sherlock Holmes’ as ‘Transformers’ is.

He might want to call the marketing department and let them know.

Even though this Straw Dogs remake was unnecessary, it was far from being a truly bad movie. But this trailer that tries to recontextualize the whole thing into a modern, almost Texas Chainsaw remake, “check out how hardcore things are gonna get” piece is borderline offensive. It also completely misrepresents the film.

Almost as inept as the film itself (and this trailer includes almost as many blank frames as it does images! Perhaps an homage to the film’s off-camera climax), this is fairly upfront about how visually flat and boring the film is. It’s also honest about how not scary and unfunny the film is. Being honest about the shortcomings of Creature is an admirably brave, yet fatal, mistake.

Quick question – has a movie ever been made to look less interesting than Priest? I’d say no. I didn’t see the film and this trailer is largely responsible for that. If somehow the actual feature managed to be interesting at all, let me know in the comments.

I’ve seen Syfy trailers that play their cards closer to the chest in terms of how crappy their film is. Christ.

You know how in Tropic Thunder Ben Stiller played a character named Tug Speedman who starred in the godawful ‘Scorcher” franchise? “Scorcher” only wishes it looked as hilariously bad as Season Of The Witch. Kids, this is what happens when you spend all of your money on castles before remembering to pay your taxes. You have to make Season Of The Witch.