What's the definition of a good trailer? Well, to me, in very non-technical terms, it must have beautiful images through editing and a sountrack that compliments these images nicely. It must also tell me about the gist of the story, yet not give too much away. It must, in short, be able to ignite my interest in the movie, even if the audience have never even heard of anything about it, whether it's about the pre-production or production.

I've been watching the trailer for this rather obscure movie called The Chumscrubber for numerous times until now, and I just love it. From the trailer, The Chumscrubber looks like the kind of movie that is along the lines of, I dunno, perhaps American Beauty? Basically, it's like a showcase of families in a small town who look like perfectly normal middle-class, all-American families, but beyond that surface there are deeply dysfunctional people. In the middle of it all is a young lad played by Jamie Bell (star of Billy Elliot), and I have a feeling that it's basically a story told through his eyes, as he is the narrator in the trailer. In fact, as what the plot outline at IMDB says, it's "a darkly satiric story about life crumbling in the midst of a seemingly idyllic suburbia." This movie includes many famous faces too, like Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, William Fichtner, Carrie-Anne Moss and Camilla Belle (who I just saw in The Ballad of Jack and Rose).

Why am I so fascinated by the trailer? Not sure, but maybe it's the way the scenes are spliced, and the way the song fits into the whole feel of the trailer. It was that song called 'Our House' by Graham Nash that goes like this, "our house, is a very very very fine house, with 2 cats in the yard, life used to be so hard..." Hearing that against the images really gave u that feeling that there's more than meets the eye to these people and their lives.

Now I'm really interested in this movie. Will it ever be shown in Singapore?

Download the trailer for The Chumscrubber here! Also contains a detailed synopsis.