The Witches

Starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, and Chris Rock, and directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), The Witches is a 2020 take on the 1983 novel and its original 1990 film adaptation. The trailer achieves memorability and poignancy by not just taking an existing song and trailerizing (or covering) it, but rather, does so by first laying out the constituent elements before bringing them together, as a sort of exposition of musical subversion.

At first, the musical selection seems incongruous—“Reach Out (I’ll Be There)”, the 1967 Motown classic by the Four Tops, enters first off-screen with a flute solo to complement the on-screen exposition as the protagonist greets his grandmother.

However, at 0:21 the music gradually enters diegetic space, first with the grandmother dancing to the music, and subsequently with the reveal of a Four Tops performance on the tiny, monochrome television at 0:25. This is somewhat logically cut off at 0:29 as the camera shifts perspective to outdoors, but there is also a clear finish to the tune with a cymbal crash—clearly, there is a fluid and playful sense of diegesis with the soundtrack here.

With the introduction of the witches, the music breaks genre completely, and yet the motive remains recognizable—the steady rhythm and sense of cadence carries over from “I’ll Be There”, and this will become more apparent as the trailer goes on. This version of the motif stretches the chromatic harmony; for example, at 0:48 we hear a move to the Neapolitan chord, a dramatic flavour that heightens the sense of tension with the witches’ arrival.

At 1:07, having established the orchestral synth motif for the witches and the association of “I’ll Be There” with our protagonist and his grandmother, these two styles more fully collide with the introduction of a title card for Roald Dahl. Notice the absolutely crunchy delayed resolution of the leading tone to the home note at 1:10, just as we see the witch turning her head. It’s a bold move, and a departure that only works in part because we know the original melody so well.

After a few vamps of the “I’ll Be There” motif set to the witches’ antics, the music reverts to its previous, more nondescriptly epic synthesized form, in part allowing for the addition of quicker rhythms and other niceties in the arrangement that serve to raise the stakes. It also serves as a break from the “I’ll Be There” theme, which returns for a classic finish with the main title card at the end. That distinctive delayed resolution, a single-note symbol for the witches’ havoc—becomes a musical calling card for the film, going beyond merely using the original song, or giving it a more straightforward cover.

The Witches is set to premiere on HBOMax in the US on October 22nd.

— Curtis Perry