Him

Him is a sports horror film produced by Jordan Peele, and its recent teaser trailer uses a blend of classical and electronic music which pivots from catchy to terrifying. After opening with the sound of a bank of stadium lights turning on, orchestral strings begin playing a single note, in octaves. The music gets louder as we see a claustrophobically close shot of a man’s face, eyes shut. Music cuts at 0:07 when the man opens his eyes. As fighter jets fly in formation high above a football stadium at 0:10, we hear a version of Bach’s “Badinerie” from the Orchestral Suite No. 2 enter with a pulsing rhythm and melody in B Minor.

Nice detail at 0:17: the double basses in the orchestra play a quick run while Cameron (Tyriq Withers) throws a football, and the whooshing sound of his throw is synched to the beat. At 0:19, the voiceover mentions mind and body being in sync, and at 0:20, the sound of Cameron’s quick feet in a training session are synched to the beat of the music just before a hip hop drum groove is layered on top of the classical strings.

As if to underline how unconventional it is to layer hip hop drums with Bachian strings, at 0:20 the camera shot flips upside-down, then jaggedly cuts back upright as we watch two athletes running in the desert. At 0:25, Cameron scream-shouts in pain during training, and his scream is–you guessed it–also on beat. The voiceover starts to sync with the music too, with the line “I’m never good enough” at 0:34 and 0:36, synched to the beat as if they were rap lyrics.

Then the story pivots, and the sports film becomes a sports horror film at about the halfway mark, making the trailer a classic rug-pull. At 0:40, as the helmeted heads of two football players collide violently, the visuals cut to a black and white x-ray style treatment, and the Bach hip hop groove vanishes. In its place we have a low pitched throbbing tone, a high pitched whine, and electronic tones that resemble animal screams.

A spinning sound effect accompanies a spinning football at 0:51, and then at 0:55 more industrial spinning sound effects make the sight of a costumed sledgehammer-swinging deranged fan’s surprise attack on Cameron even more disturbing. The visuals cut away at 0:56 so we don’t observe a strike, but as we see the intertitle “This September,” we hear unsettling gurgly low tones from a synthesizer.

We’re squarely in a Jordan Peele-style horror film trailer now, with tight close-ups, expressionless faces in surreal social gatherings, meticulous set design, avant-garde costumes, etc., and to drive it forward, we have a pulsing heartbeat-like sound, rising and falling gnarly synthesizers, more electronic screams, and trailer triplets (at 1:25). During this sequence, nearly every visual cut is on the beat (coinciding with the first of the two heartbeat sounds). The building music cuts out at 1:26 to leave space for another in-your-face command to Cameron from his trainer Isaiah (Marlon Wayans), the obligatory turn phrase at the end of trailers.

To close out the trailer, at 1:32 as we see a needle being inserted into flesh, over one last montage we have a series of screams synched with a ticking clock type sound which leads us back to the sounds of pulsing classical strings at 1:35 with a delay effect. The final shot has Cameron on a football field in the daytime, shirtless and bloodied, arms out and cheerleaders behind as we see the film’s title slowly appear over them and then the sounds of a cheering stadium crowd in the background.

Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions are known for visually and psychologically captivating storytelling, and the music for the _Him _teaser trailer is attention-grabbing, unconventional, meticulously edited and potent.

Him is in theatres September 19.

• Jack Hui Litster