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The Best Movie Trailers of 2018

From our first footage of Jackson Maine to our last footage of Fred Rogers, here are some of the best movie trailers we saw in 2018.
Rewind Best Trailers
By  · Published on December 14th, 2018

9. BlacKkKlansman

When you have a really good scene selected for your trailer, sometimes the best approach is just to let that moment breathe a little. For my money, the trailer for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is a much tighter piece of art than the film itself — which fails to adopt a singular perpsective and seems caught between a historical message and an immediate one — but once Ron Stallworth and David Duke begin their back-and-forth on the phone, the trailer positions itself as a unique bit of historiography. A civil rights procedural delivered with the hindsight of how organizations like the Klu Klux Klan would shift and warp into the mainstream over time? Here’s a film that seems to have humor and danger to spare, and the trailer for BlackKkKlansman suggests a film both about and for the right moment in American history. This is a trailer that spits pure fire, even if the film itself pulls more than a few punches.


8. Suspiria

How do you encourage audiences to take your remake of a beloved horror film seriously? Show a promising series of images that evoke the original movies and give us our first excerpt from a score composed by Thom Yorke. You might remember the small controversy this trailer caused on its initial release; people were upset that director Luca Guadagnino had chosen a much more muted color palette to recreate Dario Argento’s film. That being said, I like this trailer even more for the flag it plants in the ground. The Suspiria isn’t coy with its changed, making it clear right out of the gate that this is neither Argento’s look nor Goblin’s sound. The first teaser for Suspiria would be one of the best of the year even if it was for some no-name original movie; the fact that it rears up and challenges you to find fault in its changes makes it a great one.


7. If Beale Street Could Talk

The French need to invent a word for the feeling that rushes over you when a Barry Jenkins character turns and looks into the camera. With the film just about to hit theaters, there are several good trailers for If Beale Street Could Talk — each highlighting the various ways in which these ordinary lives clash with each other — but the first trailer was packed with a degree of warmth and emotion that made it instantly recognizable as a Jenkins film. Even the audio is just right: the early (and late) silence; the gentle piano chords that underscore emotions without telegraphing them; and the world-weary voice of James Baldwin — reintroduced to a new generation in these past few years— serving as our guide to this world. The writer in me might make some argument about the stakes being high for Jenkins after Moonlight, but honestly? This trailer just makes me glad to have another movie to look forward to this soon.


6. Mid90s

Some trailers deliver promises the final film is unable to keep; others just prove that an extra set of eyes can sometimes see your story with additional clarity. My own feelings on Mid90s aside, the trailer for Jonah Hill’s movie eclipses the feature in one important way: it offers a hint of subjectivity, a willingness to challenge some of these memories and evaluate these experiences with the hindsight of an adult. While Mid90s might provide an authentic look at life as a ’90s preteen, it rarely rises above being the cinematic equivalent of a time capsule. The authorial voice present in the trailer — the sense of someone drawing connections between friendship and family, freedom and violence — allows the accompanying soundtrack and wardrobe choices to truly shine. Minus that, you’re left with a movie that cannot do justice to the present or the past.


5. John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection

In his review of John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, FSR editor Christopher Campbell described it as equal parts nature documentary and French New Wave. “This is not a film about John McEnroe,” Campbell wrote, “And yet it is a film of John McEnroe,” and if any trailer could prepare its audience for that subtle distinction, it’s this one. By featuring only contemporary footage — no talking heads, no interviews with other professionals, no newsreel footage meant to provide context — the trailer for John McEnroe immediately separates itself from a well-worn tradition of sports documentaries. As Campbell notes in his review, the footage also evokes the idea of being backstage at a performance; seeing McEnroe between moments of high drama unwinds everything we think we know about the man as both athlete and entertainer. It may not be a sports movie for everyone, but it speaks a language cinephiles may deeply understand.


4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Who needs another superhero movie? We’re now 19 movies into the Marvel Cinematic Universe— not to mention the varied attempts by Warner Bros. to get their own thing going — and the last thought on anyone’s mind was getting excited for an animated version of Spider-Man on the big screen. But then there was The Shot: a slow-motion and breathtaking clip of Miles Morales falling upside down with the New York skyline in the background. As someone who has argued in the past that more superhero franchises should go the animated route, this was a complete validation of everything I had hoped to see. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the rare example of a trailer offering us such a different aesthetic — a dynamic visual palette full of neon lights and visualized sound effects — that it couldn’t help but chip away at even the most hardened skeptic. This trailer gave us permission to fall back in love with the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.


3. Mandy

Does it really come as a surprise that the footage from Panos Cosmatos’s ethereal revenge movie makes for one helluva impressive trailer? The best trailers — the ones that really stick with us — work as standalone pieces of art, a distillation of sounds and images that instill a longing for a longer experience. Mandy itself is often compared to prog-rock album covers from the 1970s, so it only makes sense that the theatrical trailer would feel kind of like an experimental music video in that same vein. Bonus points must be awarded to the marketing team at RLJE Films, who managed to cut a trailer for a psychedelic Nic Cage horror film that showcases his emotionally grounded performance in this movie. So often Cage’s acting decisions are distilled down to their biggest and loudest moments on the internet; the trailer for Mandy proves to the doubters out there that this particular performance may not be one to miss.


2. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

This may be the most aspirational movie trailer to ever hit theaters. Even setting aside our sadly normal standards of unrepentant hatred and bigotry, the trailer for Won’t You Be My Neighbor? popped into theaters just days before the March for Our Lives, a focal point in American politics centered on the never-ending acts of gun violence in our schools and communities. The sight of Fred Rogers teaching children to love themselves — and engaging in a quiet act of retribution against the segregation of his era — was an opportunity for us to see ourselves, if only briefly, as the type of people we could be. There’s nothing especially new or groundbreaking about the trailer for Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, it just happened to promise the right story about the right person at a time where we needed it the most. The grace of Fred McFeely Rogers speaks entirely for itself.


1. Madeline’s Madeline

These days, a not-unsizeable chunk of film criticism exists only for the immediate and thorough dissection of movie trailers. Who we see, where we see them, and what they appear to be doing is big business for many entertainment sites; after watching the trailer for Madeline’s Madeline, one cannot help but wonder how they would react if Disney’s marketing department moved away from 3-second video views and into abstract storytelling. Directed by Winston Hacking — whose collage-based visual effects have previously appeared in music videos for bands like Flying Lotus — the Madeline’s Madeline trailer is less a cinematic teaser and more a self-contained work of art that happens to evoke Josephine Decker’s film. Watching this trailer is like watching graduate students summarize the narrative within a black box theater performance; it’s an incredible piece of standalone art and, quite frankly, sits on a tier beyond any other trailers released in 2018.

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Matthew Monagle is an Austin-based film and culture critic. His work has appeared in a true hodgepodge of regional and national film publications. He is also the editor and co-founder of Certified Forgotten, an independent horror publication. Follow him on Twitter at @labsplice. (He/Him)