Nacho Vigalondo’s much hyped Colossal is soon to hit theatres after a rapturously received run at film festivals (check out our TIFF review here). It sounds worth watching if only for its absolutely bonkers premise: a heartbroken woman (Anne Hathaway) returns to her hometown after being dumped, only to discover that when she walks on a playground at a certain time of the day a giant monster appears in Seoul that matches her movements, smashes up the city and kills hundreds.
It sounds delightfully wild, and I’ll be first in line for a ticket. Even so, it’s a little baffling that the marketing team have chosen to release this particular clip to crank up anticipation, as it consists of 49 monster-less seconds of Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis sitting on a bench talking about their feelings. Now, I can totally understand that a movie might not want to blow its monster reveal in marketing material ahead of time, but would it have killed the studio to have chosen a slightly more dynamic clip from what is by all accounts a great film?
I can only figure that they’re going for the old marketing switcheroo – suckering in audiences by making the film out to be ‘yer basic indie romantic drama before laying a one-two punch of Godzilla-size mayhem on them later in the film. It’s not like we’ve got too long to wait to find out anyways, as Colossal is released on April 7th with Dan Stevens, Tim Blake Nelson and Austin Stowell joining Hathaway and Sudeikis for what promises to be a deeply idiosyncratic movie-going experience.
