Trailer Talk: Kung Fu Panda, Prom Night, Shrooms

Kung Fu Panda
DreamWorks latest is a tale of kung fu fighting and animals and judging by this snippet the studio are on top form. Jack Black has a great voice for animation and sounds absolutely the right choice for the Panda of the title while the scene showing the fighting abilities of the other animals, each representing an ancient style of kung fu (so we have viper, tiger, monkey, crane and mantis), demonstrates impressive animation as well as humour. A brilliant vocal cast also includes Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman and, wait for it, Ian McShane. This should do well over the summer.

Watch it here

Prom Night
This remake of the 1980 horror starring Leslie Nielson comes with the tag of a night to die for. Predictably, it looks dreadful, suggesting the kind of schlock horror movie studios insist on churning out. Worse of all, not once does it make you jump. The actors are all young, tanned and good-looking and no doubt teens will flock to the cinemas to watch a merciless killer slash his way through a bunch of brainless, screaming idiots at their high school prom. As is often the way with these things, this dreadful trailer won’t put enough people off to stop these ill-advised remakes from happening. Hrumph.

You can watch it here

Shrooms
More young, good-looking kids but this time we have a trailer that suggests a more intelligent horror within. Shrooms sees some American college types going camping in Ireland and taking some magic mushrooms (hence the title). As a killer comes on the scene while they’re still tripping, said college kids can’t separate what’s real from what’s not and, predictably, all hell breaks loose. The visual techniques used in the trailer are very Grudge like and with a closing shot of a guy jumping off a balcony several stories up, it does enough to intrigue.

This is the American trailer that’s gone up – you can read DoG’s review of the UK release here, and see our interview with its director here.

And you can watch it for yourself here.