It’s that time of year again: 2018 yielded a strong cast of trailers across genres, budgets, and styles. Now for our second year running, here are a few trailers that we felt stood head and shoulders above the rest this year, with a special focus, of course, on the soundtrack.

This sequel to Shaun the Sheep (2015) comes from Aardman, the studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. Known for its visually arresting stop-motion style, Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon promises, delightfully, more of the same.

Directed by Brad Corbet, Vox Lux is a film that in some ways serves as a good chaser to Lady Gaga-lead A Star is Born. Vox Lux follows Celeste in her initial rise to fame in the way of tragedy as a teenager, and subsequently her struggles with her own teenager daughter as she juggles this responsibility and maintaining her career as a relatively older popular music performer.

Based on a novel by Ryu Murakami (not to be confused with Haruki Murakami, of 1Q84 fame) and directed by Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of my Mother, 2016), Piercing (2019) is a psychological thriller hinging on a night between Reed (Christopher Abbott) and Jackie (Mia Wasikowska). Ostensibly on a business trip, Reed leaves his family with a briefcase packed with tools for murder; to his mind, the cure to excise his impulse for violence is to carry out the deed. Jackie, a call girl, is not taken so easily however, and the dynamic veers wildly between lasciviousness and outright violence. 

In previous blog posts and on Twitter, we’ve covered the unintentional lack of backing music for a The Mummy reboot trailer, and as an intentional artistic choice in the trailer for horror film A Quiet Place. We said it might be “both a first and only” occurrence for the blog, and today that’s no longer true – the second film to embrace its total lack of tonality, however, could not be more different in tone.

You may have expected Ryan Reynolds to next take up share in your mind with the nigh-inevitable Deadpool 3 – yet, early Christmas miracles do come true. While it’s not the Danny Devito starring role that fans have been clamouring for, this has been one of the most-discussed and intriguingly unusual choices in animated voice acting in recent memory.

Laika Studios (Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings) returns with its signature stop-motion animated style with Missing Link, imagining if Bigfoot were decided more attuned to modernity than any of us might think.

The latest from from the Coen Brothers is part of a Western anthology coming to Netflix. Twenty-five years in, the Brothers’ irreverent wit and playful humour shows no signs of abating. Premiering at the Venice International Film Festival, the second trailer for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs recently released. The first episode in the six-fold series, it promises to be a mix of comedy and violence, not unlike the previous Coen classic Burn After Reading, or more directly, other Coen takes on the Western True Grit (2010) and, of course, No Country for Old Men (2007). With star power like James Franco and Tom Waits in the wings, Buster Scruggs and the attendant anthology promise to follow well in the previous Westerns’ footsteps.

“The Best of Enemies” sees civil rights activist Ann Atwater go up against noted Ku Klux Klan member C. P. Ellis on the issue of school integration – and the pervasive sonic theme here is, indeed, integration. At the beginning of the trailer, for example, the sound of a distant school bell is suddenly engulfed by a burning flame; this bell exact as a perfect sound bridge and segue as it morphs into the sound of a ringing landline telephone. Similarly, this trailer employs a very subtle mashup that in some sense embodies the racial relations that the film promises to explore. 

A clear prestige contender for this year’s Oscars, “The Mule” finds Clint Eastwood on his first big screen foray since “Trouble With the Curve” (2012). 

Holmes and Watson is the next big Will Ferrell flick and most likely this holiday’s season’s biggest draw for Hollywood comedy. Aurally, the trailer hones in on a gradual and playful erosion of the fourth wall, as the ruse that Ferrell and co. put on as Victorian-era law-abiders, while never convincing, eventually drops all pretence – both figuratively and literally.

Released a few days ago, the official teaser for Focus Features’ Captive State feels primed as one part alien invasion movie with a healthy dash of vaguely political commentary. Indeed, it’s hard not to think of the much-ballyhooed American Space Force when watching this trailer. According to the official synopsis, Captive State is set in a Chicago neighbourhood after almost ten years of occupation by an alien force. What promises to propel the film is the conflict between those who comply and those who resist. Again, it is hard not to draw parallels to the political moment south of Trailaurality’s Canadian border when there is an entire coalition of American voters who identify on social media as the de facto, capital-R Resistance. This being said, we’re here for the music and sound, and there is much to say on this front as well.

The final trailer for Johnny English Strikes Again was recently released, and it picks up mostly where the previous trailer left off. The series, which parodies the James Bond series and likely takes in part from Mike Myers’ turn-of-the-century Austin Powers trilogy, is the third in a series that began in 2003 and had a sequel in 2011’s Johnny English Reborn. 

Footed by Amazon Studios, Suspiria (2018) is a remake of the 1977 Italian supernatural horror film by Dario Argento. At a world-renowned German dance company, an artistic director, an ambitious young American dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist are engulfed in an all-consuming darkness. The original film was itself based on an 1845 essay by Thomas De Quincey, Suspiria de Profundis (“Sighs from the Depths”). 

This week on Trailaurality, we’re taking a step back from weekly analysis of a given trailer and instead giving the spotlight to a large and ever-growing phenomenon in the ever-evolving fan/producer relationship with trailers: reaction videos.