Day of the Dead (1985) Class Trailer Review

Day of the Dead (1985) Trailer Review

Name of Film: Day of the Dead

Year released: 1985

Genre of trailer: horror

Your mark after viewing: 1/10

What happened in the trailer?

The trailer shows a group of people watching a film in a cinema. During the trailer the audience sees a zombie sitting in the cinema with the people watching the film.

Which positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are fulfilled well?

I didn’t really enjoy this trailer but I liked the originality of having a zombie sitting amongst an audience in the cinema watching a film.

Which aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful, and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?

I thought there was a lot wrong with this trailer starting with the voice over. The voice over for me was too deep and annoying. The trailer didn’t scream horror to me because I didn’t see enough horror aspects from the genre checklist, for example there wasn’t enough gore being shown. I thought the pace was really slow for a horror trailer and didn’t speed up towards the end which it should have done. There wasn’t a clear storyline shown in the trailer so I didn’t really know what the film was about, it kept going back showing the audience in the cinema with the zombie. We see a close up popcorn falling out of someone’s hand which doesn’t have no relevance to the genre. There wasn’t a jump scare at the end of the trailer which would have made it more exciting. The contrapuntal music at the end of the trailer makes it seem like it is advertising a horror.  

What was the trailers average score in class? Why did it receive that mark?

The average score for this trailer was 2/10 making it one of the least popular trailers we viewed in class. I think this trailer got the response it got because it wasn’t as exciting as some of the others we viewed in class. The pace of the trailer was too slow making it rather boring to sit and watch and didn’t scream out the audience horror.