The Rental

Dave Franco (Superbad, If Beale Street Could Talk) sits in the director’s chair for the first time with The Rental, a fairly on-the-nose horror film centred on the conceit of a vacation rental property gone awry. In the age of COVID-19, of course, it’s a bit easier to imagine such fears manifesting themselves. Musically, the trailer follows a three-part structure that’s both through-composed and is clearly purpose-built to gradually guide the dramatic arc from suspenseful to thrilling.

The first part of the trailer begins with a series of echoing notes on the piano, emphasizing dissonant intervals in a chromatically descending pattern. This minimal motif serves as contrast to the menacing lower strings at 0:36, in tandem with the studio title card; notice how in this second half of the first section, the lighter piano and darker strings take turns much in the same way as there are lighter and darker scenes, visually speaking. At 0:49 the music is jarringly interrupted, stopping in the middle of the measure and replaced by a note that’s entirely off the previous tonal centre.

By 0:54 we are introduced to a different musical climate entirely. Now, we hear brooding drones in the low end while various percussion conveys a sense of grimness and foreboding. This is matched by the dialogue, which has clearly shifted gears towards airs of suspicion and fear. At 1:09 the music stops in synch with a car crash, and the sound of a ticking clock unnaturally being sped up is added in for good measure.

This being said, the sound of a ticking clock sped up is inherently unnatural. This presages 1:16 where we hear an offscreen scream repeated like a soundbite in tandem with the actors’ title cards. This, with escalating strings, leads to a brief audiovisual blackout at 1:26, which provide a chance to foreground the dialogue in a moment of musical silence, before the final part of the trailer at 1:31.

In this final section, the rhythm has become much heavier, more regular, and insistent—only to be cut again at 1:43 for a scream, leadings to the harried breathing of a person in distress—and then the music cuts in again at 1:51, but only for a split second before the main title card. That is to say, the third part of the trailer initially presents catastrophe as inevitable, until it isn’t—entirely appropriate, since leaving the audioviewer constantly guessing is part of the raison d’être of the horror genre.

There’s nothing here musically that’s immediately recognizable—no cover songs; few, if any, trailer music tropes; no franchise-established motifs. Nevertheless, The Rental is an introductory and purposefully nondescript take on the horror genre, the music almost permitting the audience to focus more purely on the craft of the audiovisual narrative. In this context, the completely original trailer score makes sense.

The Rental is due for release July 24th.

— Curtis Perry