Static Media
Ah, movie trailers. Are they still a unique medium unto themselves that are enjoyable to watch on their own? While the function and ethos of the trailer is the same as it ever was — to provide a first look at upcoming cinema releases, and sell the public on them by trying to promote their tone/premise/cast/etc. — there’s no question that they’ve changed over the years from being endearingly idiosyncratic to being almost completely homogenous. After all, who isn’t sick of hearing a slowed-down remix or cover version of a pop song stretched out over three minutes, intermittently broken up by dead air for punchy lines of dialogue and/or orchestra stings?
Trends in trailers have always been a thing, from the “cast of thousands” overselling of the 1930s and ’40s to the “in a world…” Don LaFontaine ’90s era to the “BWAAAM”-ified post-“Inception” period of the ’10s, but our current trend tends to make everything seem especially same-y. Add to that the fact that a saturated entertainment news cycle means audiences might know a little too much about upcoming releases even before the trailer drops. There used to be a time when the release of a trailer was the first anyone in the general public even heard a movie was happening, let alone what it was about and what it looked and sounded like. And how many times have you heard some version of the phrase, “the trailers didn’t sell it” or “they made it look different”? Are trailers still even relevant in 2024?
The answer, my friends, is yes, and we’re here to celebrate the ones that allow that answer to continue to be “yes.” Here are the 12 best movie trailers of 2024, ranging from some unintentional camp to a mini-masterpiece by itself. In all cases, these trailers only serve to enhance and enrich the films they belong to, proving that trailers still have a place in the cinematic landscape.
12. Madame Web
Columbia Pictures
Say it with me now: “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders, right before she died.”
Though the pleasures of S.J. Clarkson’s doomed, clearly messed-with-in-post-production Sony Spider-Man Universe offering are few, they are all very much unintentional. From star Dakota Johnson’s snarky delivery of every line, to the “are they superheroes or is this some sort of Charlie’s Angels situation” dynamic between Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor, and the “what the hell happened to his work” performance of Tahar Rahim, “Madame Web” is an undeniable mess of a comic book movie. Where “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a competent example of slop tailored to fans’ tastes, this film is the horrific Frankenstein’s monster twin version, with anything potentially good within it cut away in favor of some long game cinematic universe shenanigans that will now likely not come to pass.
Which is why the trailer for “Madame Web” is the superior choice for anyone looking to enjoy the dubious charms of the film without having to sit through all 116 minutes of it. In addition to containing all of the aforementioned unintentional campiness, the trailer (set to a remix of Billie Eilish’s “bury a friend”) highlights enough action and the title character’s intriguing power set to make it seem like the actual film might be worthwhile. It’s not, but perhaps we can dream of an alternate, original cut of the movie released someday that is a genuinely fun romp rather than an embarrassing slog.
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11. Lisa Frankenstein
Focus Features
Zelda Williams’ criminally underseen “Lisa Frankenstein” is a movie that one hopes will continue to be discovered in years to come. It has all the makings of a cult classic: a kooky and spooky premise, an iconoclastic aesthetic, a winningly game cast giving it their all, and a sharp script from writer Diablo Cody. It works as a period piece, capturing the Tim Burton/Michael Lehmann late ’80s, as well as a subversive tale of teen girlhood that speaks to the current era.
The film’s final trailer, set to a remix of When in Rome’s “The Promise,” highlights all of the movie’s charms, including Cody’s barbed bon mot dialogue. But my pick for the superior clip is the movie’s teaser trailer, set to Kim Petras’ “In The Next Life,” which the editors use to perfectly enhance Williams’ neon Goth(ic) love story. It’s the kind of trailer that doubles as a fan cam (or “supercut,” for those of us used to an earlier phase of Internet), a clip that not only sells the uninitiated on the tone but reminds the fans of what they love about the film.
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10. Cuckoo
NEON
In a year filled with numerous marketing mis-steps (topped by Lionsgate’s infamous trailer for “Megalopolis,” which was pulled once it was discovered that it used false review quotes generated by AI), Neon schooled Hollywood on how to market films properly. It’s not like they only had films with easy, lay-up premises to promote, either, as evident by Tilman Singer’s “Cuckoo,” one of the most singular films of this or any year. Other than its nightmarish imagery (which the first trailer for the film conveys brilliantly, especially the image of a woman’s shadow chasing a girl on a bike), it feels nearly impossible to convey what “Cuckoo” has going on in a two-minute trailer.
But damn if the editors don’t do just that, putting enough of Hunter Schafer’s quirky and disaffected (not to mention injured) Final Girl into the clip, along with Dan Stevens’ creepy freakishness and Singer’s very European aesthetic. The “Cuckoo” trailer does all this without giving away more than an ounce of the plot, leaving audiences intrigued and wanting more. What’s impressive is how, watching the trailer after seeing the film, one can now understand the context of the clips and dialogue chosen, so much so that you could almost consider the trailer to be spoiler-filled even though it’s not. Any other studio would’ve cut a trailer for this film that robs it of its uniqueness, but Neon clearly sees oddity and originality as a feature, not a bug.
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9. The Beekeeper
MGM
Sometimes, when there’s a film with a particularly wacky premise, the marketing campaign will attempt to hide it from the public until the movie drops. Other times, the marketing will lean into it, playing up the movie’s offbeat qualities. Then there’s the straightforward approach, the one taken by MGM Studios for “The Beekeeper,” which is to cut a trailer that delivers the film’s concept, no muss, no fuss. In effect, it says “yes, this is happening, either get on board or go home.”
That’s a perfect approach for the story of Adam Clay (Jason Statham), a man who works for a clandestine organization called the Beekeepers who do the dirty work in the name of justice when the legal system can’t. David Ayer’s film harkens back to the good old days of exploitation genre cinema, so much so that if “The Beekeeper” were released in the ’70s or ’80s, we’d see a trailer for it that would look similar to Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” trailer from “Grindhouse.” Yet “The Beekeeper” is also a very 2024 movie, dealing with issues like predatory online phishing scams and corruption within the highest levels of government. So “The Beekeeper” trailer (set to a remix of Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole”) plays it straight, allowing the kookiness of the premise to shine through while showcasing Statham and Ayer’s action chops. If they’re taking this silliness seriously, then we can, too.
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8. Twisters
Universal Pictures
“Twisters” was one of the year’s most pleasant surprises, a sequel to a popular ’90s disaster/adventure movie that feels less like a lazy exploitation of IP and more like a genuine tribute. With absolutely none of the original film’s cast or creative team returning, the film needed to carve out its own niche, which director Lee Isaac Chung does with aplomb. None of us really knew if the director of “Minari” could pull it off until the film’s first trailer dropped, and the trailer absolutely sold the fact that Chung had the chops. It’s propulsive, eye-catching, and tense, with the movie’s nod to the “Alien”/”Aliens” plural title game paid off with a very “Alien”-like building of the title intercut with some striking, ominous imagery.
Even more than that, however, is the way the trailer introduced some dialogue from Mark L. Smith’s script that became popular even before the movie was released. Glen Powell parlayed his rising star wattage into the catchphrases “If you feel it, chase it” and “You don’t face your fears … you ride ’em,” giving an excellent glimpse into the movie’s country-fried charm. And, of course, there’s Brandon Perea’s exuberant exclamation of “We got twins … TWINS!!,” which only further sells the movie’s cutesy title. With this one trailer, “Twisters” went from an eye-rolling “oh, they’re making that?” also-ran into a contender for one of the summer’s best releases.
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7. Superman (2025)
Warner Bros. Pictures
We thought that the year in movie trailers was all wrapped up by December, but fortunately we’ve received not one but two holiday gifts this month in the form of some awesome teaser trailers for 2025 movies. First up is this evocative tone-setter for James Gunn’s “Superman,” a teaser that proves that other film genres can remember how to properly tease audiences, not just horror movies. Sure, people are familiar enough with Superman (David Corenswet), Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) and the like to not need everything spelled out for them, but there’s still a great deal of mystery present in this clip: Who has Supes been fighting that’s laid him out in the Arctic so bad to the point that he needs to call on Krypto for help? Why is the relationship between Superman and Lois seemingly very close, while Clark seems to look upon Lois from afar? Why is Lex Luthor dressed like James Bond? Why is a mob angry at Superman? And, most importantly, how soon can this film get into our eyeballs?
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6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Warner Bros. Pictures
One of the troubling discoveries of 2024 is that there seems to be a disconnect between some all-timer cinema and general audiences. The reason for this is still up for debate, but one of its casualties is the masterpiece that is “Furiosa,” George Miller’s much-more-than-a-prequel latest entry in the “Mad Max” saga. Sadly, audiences did not flock to the film, but that’s no fault of Warner Bros.’ marketing campaign. They gave us this shiny and chrome trailer that not only encapsulates so much of the film’s eye-popping imagery and invigorating spirit, but also harkens back to the bombastic trailers of yesteryear.
In lieu of a voiceover narration, giant lines of text fly across the screen, properly conveying the scope and ambition of the film. There’s a lot of fun playfulness here: The term “Mastermind” is (correctly!) used for Miller, the tagline “Remember Her” has a cheeky double meaning, and the whole trailer just teases the plot and new characters, not giving too much away while being fist-pumpingly exciting. By the time Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus winkingly asks “Do you have it in ya to make it epic?,” we already know the answer.
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5. Trap
Warner Bros. Pictures
M. Night Shyamalan is a filmmaker famous for his upending narrative twists, which usually arrive in the form of O. Henry-like endings. Shyamalan, ever the scamp, puts a twist on his twists with “Trap,” which has a major premise-changing development arrive early in the film instead of late. Thus, it becomes kinda appropriate to reveal such a plot point in the movie’s trailer, which means there’s an added layer to M. Night’s madness: He didn’t just put the twist earlier in the movie, he put it in the dang trailer!
The trailer for “Trap” is a helluva table-setter, establishing Girl Dad Cooper (Josh Hartnett) taking his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan) concert, only to discover that his secret identity as the serial killer The Butcher is in jeopardy, because this concert is doubling as a sting operation to flush out and capture the criminal. The audaciousness of that setup, the casting of Hartnett as a secret psychopath, and the promise that a lot more story lies in wait makes the “Trap” trailer one of the most compelling and exciting of the year.
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4. Alien: Romulus
20th Century Studios
1979’s “Alien” has, for my money, one of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time. In trying to keep the titular beastie from being revealed to the public too soon, the people behind the film decided to play up the ominous mystery of the movie, a technique which resulted in a genuinely creepy trailer. Every installment in the franchise that’s followed has sought to live up to this high bar of quality, and while the trailers for those entries have generally proven themselves worthy, it may be this year’s “Alien: Romulus” trailer that takes the crown for coming the closest to being as eerie, insidious, and promising as the one for the original “Alien.”
The “Romulus” trailer splits the difference between showing enough of the creatures we’re already familiar with from the prior films and making their presence as upsetting as possible. The trailer also winks directly at the iconic tagline from “Alien,” this time substituting an actual visual (but not aural) scream for “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream,” just before the hieroglyphic-like imagery of the title spells itself out slowly over more hauntingly gorgeous imagery. Even more haunting is a moment from the film’s teaser trailer, a tracking shot of a corridor ending on a hypersleep chamber covered in blood. A gory, thrilling, sci-fi creature feature is what these trailers promise, and that’s exactly what we got.
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3. Saturday Night
Columbia Pictures
Like “Trap,” the trailer for “Saturday Night” builds itself around a core scene that reveals the premise of the film it’s promoting, and makes the various cutaways during the trailer to other moments from the movie feel that much more poignant and/or meaningful. Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) is trying to gently explain to Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) that their experimental live comedy show is nowhere near ready to air, and that it likely never would’ve given the machinations of the NBC network and Michaels’ unorthodox methods. The scene only increases in frustrated intensity as the pace of the edits keeps time with a snippet of Jon Batiste’s jazz-influenced score, building tension along with the literal sound of a ticking clock.
Thus, all the key elements of Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan’s fairy-tale, pressure-cooked version of the making of the first “Saturday Night Live” can be seen in the trailer for “Saturday Night,” which is a pretty effective tone piece on its own. The film has several uphill battles going for it: presenting a cast full of up-and-comers and unknowns playing famous figures without doing blatant impressions of them, hitting a tone reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin without totally ripping him off, etc. Your mileage may vary on how successful the finished movie is, but it’s impressive how effectively and accurately the trailer conveys exactly what you’re in for.
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2. 28 Years Later (2025)
Sony Pictures Releasing
The second December gift drop not only teases the third in the “28…” franchise (what does a post-apocalyptic, rage-virus-infected world look like decades after the fall?) but acts as a brilliant tone poem all its own, thanks to the use of a 1915 recording of actor Taylor Holmes reciting Rudyard Kipling’s wartime poem, “Boots.” Hypnotic, evocative, unsettling, terrifying — and that’s just this trailer, so what might Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s actual film look like? Add to that the mystery evoked by the fact that this is only the first of two more “28 Years Later” installments, meaning we’re going to be going deeper into this horrifying new world with different filmmakers (like the previously announced Nia DaCosta) at the helm. The wait for this first installment is now that much more excruciating, but in the meantime, the promise of this trailer is the opposite of foreboding.
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1. Longlegs
NEON
If this were an article about the best overall movie marketing campaign for 2024, “Longlegs” would take it in a landslide. Everything from cryptic short teaser videos posted online to billboards featuring coded messages to mysterious packages mailed to key journalists only served to build up the eerie mystique of Osgood Perkins’ film long before the film was released, and created a foaming-at-the-mouth hype frenzy even before a full trailer dropped.
It’s tricky to single out one piece of the “Longlegs” marketing as superior, as it really does feel like its specialness lies in the cumulative effect it created. The film’s full trailer feels like the most generally digestible version of all of the pre-release clips. A shorter, one-minute long clip released a few days before the movie opened leans into the ballyhoo marketing of exploitation films gone by, as it purports to reveal actress Maika Monroe’s real heartbeat when she first encountered Nicolas Cage in makeup and character as Longlegs. Throughout the entirety of the marketing campaign, the full look of Cage in the role was never revealed, nor was the exact plot of the movie ever laid out in linear fashion.
So it feels like the first proper revelation of footage from “Longlegs,” a teaser trailer with the title “You’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you,” is the best choice to represent why the “Longlegs” trailer is the best of 2024. It reveals so much of the film while explaining so little, and is both eerie and beautifully haunting in its tantalizing ambiguity. It even does the “Alien” trick one better, spelling out the film’s title slowly via code. While it remains to be seen whether “Longlegs” the film will remain in pop culture in the decades to come, there’s no doubt its trailer will have ripples that roll out for several more years. Trailer- and marketing-wise, we’re now living in a post-“Longlegs” era, and I cannot wait to see what that means for 2025.
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