This week we Trailer Talk about Tobe Hooper’s Islamic horror movie, meet some  Friends with Benefits Kids, and hold a wake for LCD Soundsystem.

DJINN

Somehow Tobe Hooper’s name still carries some weight in the horror world, despite only making one great film and a lot of increasingly bad ones. Let’s not bring Poltergeist into the mix because that’s pure Spielberg, even if his name isn’t on the marquee. Djinn is the latest attempt by Hooper to grasp for relevance.

A married couple moving into a sparsely populated apartment complex and having frequent domestics about their choice of residence. Hardly new terrain to explore in a “haunted house” movie, but points for giving it a new makeover. The “Djinn” also appears in the form of an attractive woman in black.

Beyond that, the trailer is giving nothing away and not in that delightfully ambiguous way that so few trailers manage, it just looks like a mess. A lot is happening but there’s no through-line for the audience to really give a crap; when dealing with ghosts or other such supernatural fiends, it’s a good idea to establish the legend before plunging the characters and the audience into the thick of it. This trailer is just shy of 4 minutes long and I’m no closer to understanding what the hell is going on.

I googled “djinn” and the most interesting aspect of the mythology that I found is that the Islamic version of Satan was a djinn who defied Allah because he was created with “free will”, so bonus points to Islam for having a better plot than Christianity. I never understood how Lucifer rebelled against God when angels were never created with the free will to make that decision, at the least the Muslims care about plot holes.

See, what I just said sounded more interesting than anything presented in this trailer. This would also be true if I had said: I don’t see the point of celery without dip.

FRIENDS WITH KIDS

Friends with Kids is what happens when the “friends with benefits” concept goes full retard.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the entire cast but this idea makes no sense. I get no strings attached sex, but no strings attached parenthood? What kind of idiot would go along with that? Two healthy, attractive, successful people would not look at that arrangement as a logical one. You screw up a Fuck-Buddy scenario and the worst that can happen is you now have someone you have to awkwardly avoid at parties hosted by mutual friends. You screw this up and you’ve got the potential for custody battles and a little person, whose life you’ve just ruined because you were narcissistic enough to create life without having to pay your dues first.

The team involved are smart people, so I can’t imagine such a dumb premise will pass by unchallenged, so there is still hope for this film to be an interesting spin on the complications surrounding love and family in contemporary society. Or it’s all a bit of a balls up and we should just watch Bridesmaids again.

SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS

I am a fan of LCD Soundsystem but I never got to see them play live. I was never particularly gutted about that notion, I have never been a big fan of concerts, saving it for a select few acts and beyond that I have the music and that’s enough.

After viewing this trailer for the LCD Soundsystem concert movie, Shut Up and Play The Hits, I suddenly feel sick with envy that I never got to participate in a moment like that.

Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, with assisted camera work by Spike Jonze, have created something that looks like a real movie and not just an artistically static, by-the-numbers telecast. The image is rich with colour and detail, there are some beautiful looking compositions selected, but most crucially Shut Up and Play the Hits seems to have tapped into something that so few concert movies manage to do… The experience.

Once again, 3D is unnecessary for immersion when you have an eye for capturing something. In a scant few minutes this trailer manages to capture a moment; something that will never happen again. Not just the visual and sonic atmosphere of the show but the emotional heart of being there and being part of that crowd.

A good concert will look and sound great, but a memorable one is so much more than that. This trailer embodies that; it’s a communal experience. There is a mixture of sorrow and elation at play here, from the crowd to the band themselves, that is just electrifying to watch and I cannot wait to see the entire thing and feel just a scrap of the magic that must have been in the air that night in Madison Square Garden.