Analysing a horror trailer (Nhung Pham)

Teaser trailers are very short in length unlike typical trailers. They are normally between 30-60 seconds which contains little footage from the film. Teaser trailers are usually made for popular and big budget movies which is often made while the film is still in production or being edited to let them know that the film will be coming in the near future.

Scream 4 (2011) Teaser Trailer

In the fourth sequence of scream, it shows a few famous characters from  the first original scream such as the ‘final girl’ Sidney and the stock character, Dewey the unwise policeman. Through this teaser trailer we see many events taking place which leaves the audience in suspense. 

In the first part of the teaser trailer we are shown the protagonist of the movie also known as the ‘final girl’ Sidney. We automatically know that she is the final girl from the previous sequences, which usually starts off with her picking up a phone and hearing a husky, cryptic voice threatening to kill everyone around her.  

In this scene, the infamous scream mask, which has become an iconic prop is shown. This signifies that the scream mask, also known as the ‘Antagonist’ is back to kill. It creates a sense of fear to the audience but also the characters in the movie as they may be familiar with the mask therefore the audience would be able to relate to the characters.

One convention of the horror genre is that the victim is a teenager, this is clearly seen in this scene of a young female dropping from the air as the first victim. This is conventional because the typical audience of horror films are teenagers therefore would find this frightening because they can identify with the victim. 

The two male in the scene is heard to be said “The unexpected is the new cliché”, “And virgins can die now” . This is ironic as according to Clover the final girl is typically virginal and avoids drugs, sex etc therefore she survives. 

   

In this scene, it shows the masked killer trying to kill his victim which again is a teenager. It is conventional that the killer is masked because they wouldn’t want to break the rule of revealing the identity of the killer. This makes the victim vulnerable to the masked killer. 

This extract shows the masked killer slashing and killing his victim. It makes the audience eager to know what happened during the film and who is going to die because of their wrong doings.  

In this scene it shows the character Gale Weathers played by courtney cox a well known hollywood star, taking of the scream mask. Gale weathers is seen on all four series of Scream, who plays a reporter. Therefore in this extract where we see Gale taking of the scream mask it makes the audience think that she could be the killer. This is also known as the ‘red herring’ where we are made to think that they are the killer but turns out not to be. 
  
 

In this final scene, there are two female teenagers in a house. The female in the yellow top picks up the phone and  hears a husky voice saying ‘I hear you like horror movies’ she then passed the phone to the other female saying ‘here, its for you’ which the teaser trailer then ends. This leaves a cliff hanger for the audience wanting to go see the movie and to find out what happens next.