by Dockery
WGN America’s first scripted series Salem, which deals with the infamous Salem Witch Trials and the very possibly fictitious (but no less infamous) Salem demon hauntings, just got a brand new trailer, one that manages to capitalize on a lot of cool imagery with terrible editing.
I’m not sure who forgot every 10 seconds that they’d already used the “flashing the image (or 2 images) really fast over and over” technique, but they did it 5 times in this trailer. I know that modern horror trailers are extremely fond of looking like a View-Master that you’re clicking through really fast, and of ending every single clip with a musical “BOOM” to let us know that whatever words are coming next (usually something like “…is FEAR”) are super fucking important, but it’s old at this point. These aren’t poor jump scares that need a crashing sound to improve them. These are images that you’ve shown us for about a second, images that have made their presence known, and now you’re just turning them into a flipbook. Sorry. A spooooookkkyyy flipbook.
That said, I’m looking forward to this series. While some of the shots look like background sets from Xena: Warrior Princess, I think, with the proper amount of seriousness, there could be some really cool stuff here. They have enough dudes with requisite facial hair to corner the Game of Thrones market for a little bit, and we all love a good Silent Hill-esque girl with a weird insanity mask on.
Salem premieres on Sunday, April 20th, at 10p/9c.
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