Film Trailer: Mirrors (2008)

As I'm sure you can see this is the trailer for the horror film 'Mirrors' which is out at the moment, based on the 2003 Korean film 'Into The Mirror'. To be completely honest, the trailer actually scared me quite a bit, particularly the last segment; I am pretty easily scared but I think this was effective, although I'm sure it helped that I watched it in the dark... And I'm going to see the film later. Aagh! Aaaanyway, what I'm going to talk about here is what makes the trailer so effective - apart from me being a bit scared of everything.
The trailer starts off with a fade into a nice establishing shot of a lovely house in a lovely neighbourhood, and the main characters and their family situation is set up, and there is quiet music. It's high key lighting and normal cuts. We then have a fade, showing us time has passed and introducing us to a new setting - the man from the previous sequence of shots getting out of a car and walking towards something, before another fade to another establishing shot, this time of an enormous, derelict building. With another fade we see presumably the inside of the building, with an ELS of a set of stairs and two people standing on them. This now has low-key lighting and is getting more sinister as we hear dialogue over the top of the shots. The use of fades gives the sequence a fairly slow pace, and we don't have too much to take in, so we can listen to the speech, which explains that the man who previously had this job was obsessed with the mirrors. This is the first connection to the title of the film and what it's about, making it a good time for a dissolve into the 20th Century Fox logo - the image of which has oh so cunningly been mirrored, as has the next image, the Regency logo. The music starts up and on the next shot of the actual film we hear those high pitched, almost frenzied strings which really help build tension - here the fades help with this because we have longer to wait for the next shot and it's all very frightening. The protagonist starts looking scared, and in one shot his back is to the mirror, but then his reflection turns around. We get a sudden, sinister drum beat and he turns; there's a great matched cut into a whip pan where we have his POV, seeing what he would as he turns. This sudden camera movement after so many static shots is startling and the glimpse into the character's viewpoint involves the audience, letting us feel his fear. Then we start getting short shots of things we can't quite make out but that we know are ominous and scary and not quite right with lots of shadows. The music [I think] builds to a howling/screaming like sound, and we get a title screen bearing the director's name appearing with a short banging sound as though it has slammed into view, white text on a black background. There are more short shots and a line of speech, with a sense of confusion and rising fear and suspense for the audience. Then we have more quick, short shots interspersed with fades and a creepy soundtrack, and we learn a little more (sort of) about the mirrors. There is a fade to another title screen, stating another film this director has made, which also allows for a change in setting and time. However, it is still low-key lighting, and there's a lot of confusion for the audience with short shots in quick succession, revealing a few more tiny snippets about the story, teasing us with a shortened version where we don't know exactly what's happening. At about 1.19 minutes in, there is a shot of a girl in what looks like some kind of cell, which uses jump cuts to add to this sense of confusion and the idea of paranormal happenings. There is a great deal of variation in pace and rhythm which makes it unsettling, because we don't know what's coming next in that respect; the high speed shows us a lot in a shorter space of time, and the slower parts build up tension and suspense, so when mixed together like this are even more effective. At this stage all the characters we see are in a state of panic, fear, desperation, confusion, all of which are transferred to the audience through the usage of the close up range, the music, the soundbites of screams and exclamations, and the content of the shots themselves. We see reflections where there aren't people, reflections doing horrible things, monstrous characters, and of course some children being creepy. After a succession of very short shots like this, we have a fade, and a MCU of the man in real despair screaming out to a mirror, a cut to an ECU on a man's face, and a few shots of some mirrors exploding, after which there is another fade into a shot showing small pieces of glass raining onto the floor, and the title 'MIRRORS', which is also mirrored in the surface of the floor. There are two more title screens with credits, and a slower fade into another one, providing the date of release and a website. So, that's the trailer. I think it was effective in giving a taster of the film and enticing the audience to want to find out what happens even though it may be scary, and therefore in promoting the film.