If you're a fan of the strange, then this past week in trailers was a good one for you. Nancy Meyers delivered the most vanilla entry of the bunch with her standard adult contemporary fare, but other than that, it's haunted houses and modern-day silent films and scream queens and superheroes and—craziest of all—a female lead talk show. The horrors! May at the movies is in full swing, but that doesn't mean we've stopped looking forward. Consider these the amuse-bouche before your full-length feature main course.
Sometimes a movie is stacked with so many of your favorite people you have to repress your hopes deep enough to mitigate disappointment. But... damn. Guillermo del Toro returning to his horror roots? Jessica Chastain? Tom Hiddleston? Charlie Hunnam? Even Mia Wasikowska has us all revved up for her turn in Crimson Peak! And this trailer is obviously stunning, so what's a fan to do with so much pent up hope and excitement?! We don't have a solution yet, but we're just going to watch this clip until we figure it out.
Pause at: 0:57 for a bloodbath in the literal sense. Oh, no at 1:52, 1:54, 1:58, 2:01, 2:02, 2:14, and 2:24
Essential Quote: "A house as old as this one becomes, in time, a living thing."—Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston)
It is no understatement to say that The Tribe is one of the most enthralling, intense, disturbing, incredible, unexpected movies you could ever see. Seriously. It screened at Sundance and the amount of time we spent breathing and not breathing while it played was roughly half and half. Sergey is a new student at a boarding school for the deaf in the Ukraine, and he quickly gets jumped into the institution's ruling gang of boys. There are a few girls in the clique, but they're mostly around to be pimped out to locals after hours. Sergey takes on the role of escort for the girls, and his life starts to get a lot harder when he falls for one of his charges. It all feels troublingly real, and the fact that there is no music, no spoken language, and no subtitles anywhere forces you to immerse yourself deeply in the cold, brutal society created by teens who are Lord of the Flies levels of ruthless. And that immersion makes the events that unfold inescapably haunting.
Pause at: 1:08. If only this was as bad as it gets for Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko).
Confession: I did not grow up having an attachment to the original Jem cartoons, but from the reactions to this trailer on Twitter and across the Internet, it sounds like this big screen adaptation strays drastically from its source material. So if you haven't yet, start formulating your thoughts on the movie version of Jerrica Benton.
Pause at: 0:55 for Jerrica Benton (Aubrey Peeples). Stop at 0:57 for the nemesis, Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis), and then 1:06 for Jem.
Song: One Direction, "Story of My Life"
Essential Quote: "Showtime synergy."—Jem/Jerrica, notably not saying "Showtime, Synergy"
TBS is kind of a weird place for talk shows (just ask Conan and George Lopez), but damn it if they don't have our endorsement after giving a hosting chair to longtime Daily Show favorite Samantha Bee. This clip gives us no sense of what Bee's show will actually be about or how it will be structured, but with the Daily Show on her resume we're sufficiently satisfied with her credentials.
Pause at: 0:33. HA!
Essential Quote: "Actually, you know what? I think I'm kind of done with sausages."—Samantha Bee
This looks weirdly familiar, as in "Did I see this same movie in 2013 with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson?" familiar. It's also a Nancy Meyers movie, which means it's going to look and feel and play out in the way that Nancy Meyers movies do. Think Something's Gotta Give and It's Complicated. It's also basically The Devil Wears Prada 2 in which Andy Sachs has fully graduated from the school of Miranda Priestly and then become her by starting her own online fashion site. Fortunately it looks like she kicked her whiny BF Nate to the curb.
Pause at: 0:10 for one incredibly well-preserved 70-year-old. No but actually did Andy Sachs just adopt the alter ego Jules Ostin at 0:14?! Never too old for a fist bump at 0:54. Has there ever been a more Nancy Meyers look than 1:33? You knew it was coming at 2:07.
Song: Kendrick Lamar, "i" and Grouplove, "Ways to Go"
Essential Quote: "Good times."—Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro)
Another Sundance triumph is hitting the theaters, and this one took home the US Documentary Grand Jury Prize in Park City year. The Wolfpack is actually the six Angulo brothers who grew up and spent nearly every minute of their lives in a cramped Manhattan apartment, because they were home schooled and their dad barely ever let them go outside. With so little exposure to the world, the boys experienced it through movies, which they also elaborately reenact with each other. It's a very, very specific way to grow up, and the filmmakers were given unprecedented access to the boys' lives. They were forced into a hermetically sealed existence, but at least they have each other. And now, we have them!
Pause at: 0:19 for dear old dad. A majorly full house at 0:39. Prison maintenance at 0:49. Making due at 1:08, 1:10. History class at 1:19.
Essential Quote: "The summer was more a chance of us getting out. Sometimes we would get out once a year, and one particular year, we never got out at all."
Team Murphy has been back in the writers' room, and the fruit of its latest effort is Scream Queens! The setting is Wallace University, in particular its prized pan-Hellenic jewel, Kappa Kappa Tao, which is lorded over by "Queen Bitch" Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts). After all, no Murphy production is complete without a "Queen Bitch" and who has got a less-inviting resting face than Emma Roberts? Kappa House is loathed by the school's Dean (played by Jamie Lee Curtis!!!!) and so she decrees that the sorority must be open to a more diverse panel of applicants. For reasons that don't matter at all, this kicks off a serial killing spree carried out by a Devil-masked murderer. And the cast is ludicrously perfect, because it makes not one damn bit of sense (which is to say, it makes complete sense): Lea Michele, Abigail Breslin, Nasim Pedrad, Oliver Hudson, Skyler Samuels, Keke Palmer, Billie Lourd, Diego Bonita, Glen Powell, Lucien Laviscount, Niecy Nash, Nick Jonas, and Ariana Grande. Every episode is built around a new murder, which is probably why this cast is so stuffed, but we're just hoping that our dear Ariana Grande makes it all the way to the end. What does Ariana Grande on episodic television even mean??
Pause at: 0:05 for Lea Michele as Rumer Willis in The House Bunny. Paging Madison Montgomery at 0:10. Killer in the house at 0:12. This feels a lot like a first death at 0:17. Again with Lea Michele's back brace at 0:18! Seriously, why is having a back brace like the worst thing for a sorority girl ever at 0:24?
Essential Quote: "Worst-case scenario: There is an actual serial killer on the loose."—Dean Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis)
The first True Detective trailer was all moody and faces and music and Colin Farrell's mustache. But this one's actually got some words in it. OK, only a few words, but that's still more! We've got three cops (Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Taylor Kitsch) of varying sanity and legitimacy, and one criminal/entrepreneur (Vince Vaughn) who's on the brink of losing it all. There's lots of money and reputations and likely lives on the line, and it's all going down in sunny Los Angeles. Get ready for some angsty pontificating and one really pissed off Rachel McAdams!
Pause at: 0:47 and 0:49 for possible battle scars on Officer Riggins.
Essential Quote: "Sometimes your worst self is your best self."—Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn)
Netflix will give you no time to rest on its can't-stop-won't-stop campaign to release as many shows as possible. The newest entry is Between, about a town called Pretty Lake in which everyone over the age of 22 spontaneously starts to die. The survivors are quarantined by the government, and we're kind of thinking The Leftovers here, right? "What happens when you lose so many people you love and you have survivor guilt and you're isolated from the world?" kinds of questions. It's got a brief six-episode stint, so at the very least, it won't take up much of your time.
Pause at: 0:09, 0:19, 0:21, 0:24, and 0:33 for the fallen.
Essential Quote: "It has been confirmed that no one over 22 is left alive."
The superhero arms race continues! Legends coming to air means that DC beats Marvel to the small screen before the competition's own super team show, The Defenders, debuts on Netflix in 2017. Ohhhhhh SNAP! The CW program will feature Arrow and The Flash, who are already well established and thriving on the network, and give featured roles to Rip Hunter, The Atom, Captain Cold, Firestorm, Heatwave, Hawk Girl, and White Canary as well (double lady hero bonus!). And, hey, who doesn't love Victor Garber!
Pause at: Really any time and consider how good special effects on TV have gotten.
Essential Quote: "In the future, none of you are heroes. You're legends."—Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill)
