‘Under the Skin’ Trailer: Scarlett Johansson Consumes Both Hitchhikers and Art Film Aesthetics

By  · Published on September 2nd, 2013

under-the-skin

Normally, a trailer- even a teaser- will lay down some basic foundation about the movie it’s advertising. Story, characters, setting. Something.

Then there’s Under the Skin. The first trailer for the upcoming sci-fi film has just been released, but I hesitate to call it a trailer (or even a teaser) despite the video being labeled as one. Maybe “brief collection of quick shots that will probably be in the film” would be more accurate.

See if you can decipher it down below:

There are moments when this trailer almost feels like a parody of an abstract art house film (I’m looking at you, nude man doing high knees in the dark). Yet other pieces are dazzling, like that face sinking into mirror-y water and the nature footage. Perhaps if there was more of an effort to edit this like a real trailer and not just a zero-context montage, it might have a little more impact. Just a few shots that last for more than a second would have been nice.

Under the Skin was originally a novel of the same name by Michel Faber, about an alien named Isserley (Scarlett Johansson) that feeds upon unassuming hitchhikers. This trailer’s got Johansson and shots of a few characters in cars, so we know at least that much has made it into the final film. Hopefully the next trailer fills in the missing details.

[via The Guardian]