Sean Parker
This week’s trailer is a complete mind-melting mystery. The music alone causes unnerving tension and increased readiness and there’s an atmosphere of absolute dread basking in its presentation of winter desolation befitting the film’s upcoming February release. This week, I’m diving—head first—into the first impressions of Petar Pasic’s upcoming The Pond.
It’s somewhat masterful the way The Pond’s trailer grabs your attention, establishes a need to see its mystery unravel, and hype itself up without ever even getting into the plot. The trailer is very image based, and it’s downright cognizant of it. The cinematography looks very well-crafted and the trailer uses it as a lure for not just for a “crazy fish,” but also the audience’s intrigue. We’re also told that our senses may not account for much in these warped woods where we see a man with a grass face sitting on a throne made of hay bales and two people interwoven at the face and hands. The imagery and camerawork alone are enough to provoke a bit of a Wicker Man vibe and only adding to that are the circled images of animals provoking a cryptic unease in the rising tension before screaming drowns out the music and the title card is revealed. Yes, it looks weird and creepy plus the trailer is somewhat unconventional, replacing typical plot guiding inserts that would say things like “From the writer of…” or “In a world where…” for the aforementioned images. The result of a dizzying puzzle-infused trailer only piques my curiosity.
If you’re like me and must know more about what’s going on, the official synopsis is also playing it close to the chest about revealing any details. “An anthropologist (Marco Canadea) on the verge of an apocalyptic discovery begins to descend into madness, his hallucinations revealing something sinister is after him.” Short and sweet, it seems the more I try to dredge up on The Pond the more interested I become. There’s some bewitching imagery and behind the scenes photos on both The Pond’s and director Petar Pasic’s official Instagram accounts, offering no new information but certainly hastening an obsessive need within me for the feature’s debut.
The Pond will be releasing to VOD on February 23.
