So there are a few question marks about this teaser trailer Eli Roth just unveiled on Twitter for a surprise new horror movie set in space that he’s made (is making?). While the idea of a new scary movie set in outer space is great—it’s a pretty small subgenre of horror, despite the long shadow that Alien has cast over the years—a few things make us suspicious.
First of all, that name. Mission: Fear? That sounds like the title of a Saturday Night Live parody of an interstellar thriller, possibly starring Jon Lovitz’s Master Thespian. HIs horror movies have always had a healthy dose of humor, but that title makes the whole enterprise sound like a laugh. Secondly, the quality of that teaser is—subpar, shall we say? It bears all the hallmarks of someone who was goofing around in iMovie one afternoon and decided they’d kill 45 minutes by making a fake teaser trailer, not exactly the level of quality you’d expect from someone who consistently delivers good-looking films (even if A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd would beg to differ.) And finally, there’s the voiceover, which—as a sharp-eared Twitter commenter points out—bears an eerie resemblance to someone we all know:
Then again, maybe Roth got so sick of waiting to announce his new project, he just said, “Fuck it,” threw this thing together real quick, and launched it out into the world. If that’s the case, we’ll be the first ones in line to buy a ticket to Mission: Fear. But even so, a little more time on the teaser trailer wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world—or any other world this film might choose to visit, should it arrive in April 2017 as promised.