Lame Trailer Clichés: The Freeze Frame

Yes, another weekly feature. It was something I came up with while selling someone a Lotto ticket at work and gazing at the TV playing the trailer disc. I've seem craploads of trailers in my time thanks to working a DVD shop, and more often than not they're pretty silly. So every Monday, I'll look at a certain lame trailer cliché that seems to pop up in quite a few of them.

Ah, the freeze frame. They're activities we do in our first years of Drama, just so we can create complicated situations with a single movement. Alas, trailers use them in a different way. Many different ways, in fact. Some can be effective, others are just...well, what's the point? Freeze frames are supposed to be the production stills, not subjected to the trailer, which can move and speak. Let's take a look at the four different freeze frames:

1) The 'Introduction' Freeze Frame.

Most of the time, this one is quite effective. Especially in the case of The Change-Up - an otherwise awful film - which shows the life of Dave perfectly. And hey, the second freeze frame sums up the movie perfectly. It is a giant shit in the face. (full trailer here)

Another Gem from the 'Nic Cage Has Bills to Pay' Franchise

Film: Trespass
Year: 2011
Director: Joel Schumacher
Written by: Karl Gajdusek
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Ben Mendelsohn, Cam Gigandet, Jordana Spiro, Liana Liberato, Dash Mihok, Emily Meade. 
Running time: 86 min. 

Maybe we treat Nicolas Cage unfairly. Maybe, in some better world, his attempts at rebooting his career are actually good. Or maybe, Nicolas Cage is just messing with us and he's inventing a new form of comedy: where he tries too hard with so little. I think there is something that we can take away from the past few years of his career: he is a more is more kind of guy, and unfortunately that doesn't work when you are an Oscar winning actor. His recent effort, Trespass, is possibly his worst film to date. And that doesn't even have that much to do with him. His 'more is more' technique seemed to rub off on everyone else in the movie: everyone screamed at the top of their lungs even though no-one could hear them, the villains were so over-the-top they were measly caricatures, and then there was Jordana Spiro...but we'll get to her later. I don't know whether anyone was trying to compete with Nic to get the 'most over-the-top' award or something, but everyone managed to annoy me more than Nic's worse films and Cam Gigandet's entire filmography combined. It is the longest 86 minutes I've ever had to sit through in my life.