A good trailer is a thing of beauty. Think of the trailer for Jordan Peele’s Us, which gave away just enough of the story to capture our interest while being infused with disturbing music and moments that let us know what we were in for. Truly great trailers are hard to come by: most do too much, revealing every beat of the story so that you feel as if you’ve watched the film/series already. Others spoil all the best jokes, sucking the fun out of the film.
Then, there are those trailers that leave you wondering: WTF did I just watch? That was my experience watching the trailer for AMC’s new horror series NOS4A2 (get it?) starring Zachary Quinto. The series is based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Joe Hill (son of Stephen and Tabitha King), and the synopsis reads:
“The supernatural horror series NOS4A2, based on Joe Hill’s bestselling novel of the same name, tells the story of Charlie Manx, a seductive immortal who feeds off the souls of children, then deposits what remains of them into Christmasland – an icy, twisted Christmas village of Manx’s imagination where every day is Christmas Day and unhappiness is against the law. Manx finds his whole world threatened when a young woman in New England discovers she has a dangerous gift.”
Cool, because I got absolutely none of that from the trailer. The series, created by Fear the Walking Dead executive-producer Jami O’Brien, stars Quinto as Charlie Manx, Ashleigh Cummings (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) as Vic McQueen, along with Olafur Darri Olafsson (Lady Dynamite), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Punisher), and Virginia Kull.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a trailer so muddled and incoherent, that does nothing to introduce its main characters, plot or themes. I mean, we get barely a glimpse of Quinto and he’s the biggest name on the show. While I’m all for Quinto returning to his villainous roots (he was amazing in AHS: Asylum), I honestly hope that this show is worthy of his talents.
As far as I can tell, the series involves kids being kidnapped in old timey Rolls Royces and taken to Jack Skellington’s Christmastown. There’s an edgy female protagonist (we know this because she wears black and drives a motorcycle) but we know zero about her. And that’s a shame, because from the description, there’s cool stuff here: evil Christmas, child vampires, ominous Scrabble tiles. But the entire mess feels completely incoherent. Come on, AMC. You can make a better trailer than this. Although if this is the very best you can cull from the series, well, I have some concerns.
What do you think of the NOS4A2 trailer, or did it lose you at the title?
(via Collider, image: screencap)
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