The Testaments

This week we’ll listen to the trailer for The Testaments, a new Hulu tv series based on a dystopian Margaret Atwood novel set years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. For the opening 19 seconds of the trailer we have voiceover from Agnes (played by rising star Chase Infiniti, who co-starred in One Battle After Another), as we see her present her dollhouse, with scene inserts of real people acting out the roles of the dolls she is describing. Meanwhile, the music sticks to gentle cinematic minimalism, slowly pivoting between two neighbouring notes using a voice-like synthesizer. It feels vaguely creepy, but we’re nowhere near horror film scoring. Yet.

At 0:19 we unexpectedly shift gears, as the intro to the first verse of The Cranberrie’s 1993 hit song “Dreams” bounces happily in, while we see an aerial shot of a sunny day at the seaside. Now, “Dreams” is arguably the happiest song The Cranberries ever recorded. We remember the band more for their grungier, angrier tracks like “Zombie.” The peppy guitar, subtle drums, breathy joyful vocals and the major key harmonies of “Dreams” lull us into a false sense of security, as from 0:19 to 0:34 we’re seeing (and hearing) girls in uniform having fun and starting a fresh school year (they attend a prep school for future wives).

Don’t be fooled though, because at 0:34, the camera slowly pans up to show the dangling feet of hanging dead bodies at the front doors of the school the girls are about to enter. The Cranberries’ song disappears here, replaced instead by the sounds of a harsh, cold wind blowing.

From here, we are treated to a well-executed trailerizing of The Cranberries’ track. At 0:40, as we cut to interior shots of the girls’ school in the evening, we hear Cranberries’ vocalist Dolores O’Riordans vocals isolated, without the band, and now accompanied instead by menacing bass synths. There is a clever clicking sound effect at 0:53 synched with the visuals as we see a series of girls’ faces–the spinning effect here evokes a game of roulette.

O’Riordan’s vocals return at 0:58 with the lyric “Never quite as it seems,” repeated twice and now, instead of the band’s guitar, the rhythm driving the vocals sounds more like a ticking clock (I’ll sound like a broken record here, but this ticking clock motif is a trend in trailer sound that we’ve been commenting on for nearly a decade, see our 2017 blog on the Dunkirk trailer for an early reference).

By 1:07, as the intertitles reference Margaret Atwood, the soundtrack is completely made up of menacing bass synths and ticking clocks. The voiceover references bringing women “back to their rightful place” just as we see a girl’s head being forced underwater at 1:12. The bass synths and ticking clock continue, becoming increasingly tense and claustrophobic. At 1:26 a pounding bass drum pulse comes in, evoking a racing heartrate. We begin to see scenes of police/military violence. Over a series of shots of Agnes’ face, we hear O’Riordan sing “The person falling here is me.”

That last word, “me,” now gets repeated over and over, starting from 1:39, as though the cd player is skipping. The layers of tense detuning strings here help to tip our anxiety over the edge. When at 1:46 a character named Garth (Brad Alexander) tells Agnes, “We need to destroy everything,” the bass drums goes double time like a panicking heartrate.

To close, and just to keep us guessing, at 2:00, the trailer reprises the original joyful sounds of The Cranberries’ song, with full band, as we see four of the main characters posed and gazing innocently at the camera.

Will this be the creepiest coming of age series you’ve ever watched? There’s a good chance it will. But the trailer is all the more effective for its use of on-point lyrics from an innocent song by a band known for their aggressive side.

The Testaments streams on Hulu April 8.

— Jack Hui Litster