Turn on your best speakers (you know, the ones with the bass) and watch this on a TV (if you can) – it’ll be worth the extra effort (especially if you’ve never seen this trailer before).


I was fortunate enough to get blindsided by this trailer at a movie theater. Today, I have no idea what film I was watching because all I remember from that event was this trailer. Watching the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trailer in the theater is so far my favorite trailer-watching experience ever. It was awesome!

Instead of using exposition, the trailer effectively sets up intrigue using music and visual storytelling. By the end of the trailer, I know there’s a sort of investigation going on, a girl is involved, murder is most likely the crime, and Daniel Craig has figured something out. Oh, and I also know this is a going to be a dark, twisted movie. The quick edits in time with the Led Zepplin Immigrant Song cover set up this harsh frenetic tone perfectly. And shout out to the unique font for doing this as well; trailer fonts sometimes go unappreciated, and this font is an impressive one.

At the center of this trailer is the snow-covered road leading up to the snowy house, and I love how the entire trailer is built around this long shot. You get to see pieces of peripheral action, but you are always brought back to the equilibrium of the snowy house shot. And as you are brought closer and closer to the snowy house, you are visually sucked deeper and deeper into the trailer. At the same time, the trailer shows you bits and pieces of the story’s central mystery, spurring your thoughts into theories. So by the time you reach the snowy house at the end of the snow-covered road, you are completely invested in and intrigued by the trailer.