7 Trailers That Blatantly Lied To You In 2017
Trailer trickery.
Movie studios have their work cut out when it comes to trailers. Preview footage must tell the public what the film is about, who's in it, give them a taster of the tone and tell them when it's arriving in theatres... all in the space of three short minutes.
Revealing too much is a common mistake here, as the majority of blockbuster trailers either present the movie's best scenes prematurely, or are packed with spoilers. This can be frustrating for cinemagoers, but it's nothing compared to those times when trailers have sold the public only lies and half-truths.
Deception is a tool marketing departments rely on too often, and this is certainly the case in Hollywood. Countless campaigns have led the punters into believing the movie they're shelling out hard-earned cash to see is something else entirely.
This isn't always a bad thing. Anyone who went into Cabin in the Woods expecting the generic horror that was teased left pleasantly surprised, and any Nicolas Winding Refn movie delivers more substance than the previews suggest, to cite but two examples.
Trailer trickery was rife in 2017, and studios were guilty of everything from white lies to blatant false advertising, and here are the worst offenders...
7. The Beguiled
After watching the second trailer for Sofia Coppola's adaptation of The Beguiled, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a Misery ripoff set against period backdrop.
Less than a minute in and the footage is already serving up jump-scare noises to trick viewers into thinking they're being sold horror, and many of the scenes which follow were framed to present Kirsten Dunst and the rest of her all-female household as evil-doers with malevolent intentions towards Colin Farrell's John McBurney.
The worst offender comes towards the end of the trailer when Farrell, having awoken from an operation, bleats out "What have you done to me you vengeful b****s?" What they've actually done is performed life-saving surgery on him.
On no level is The Beguiled even remotely compatible to Misery. If anything, it's the opposite of the Stephen King adaptation. This is a period drama in which the residents of a girls school nurse an American Civil War corporal back to health, only for him to become a little clingy and do everything in his power to remain in their company.
Admittedly, all hell breaks loose when Farrell's character sleeps with one of the students, but he's very much the one in the wrong throughout.