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No matter what your opinion is on the state of Saturday Night Live, whether you’re a diehard fan or someone who hasn’t found it funny since (insert season number), one thing most viewers of the show can agree on, from young to old and in between, is that the show always knocks it out of the park with their TV and movie parodies. The recent “HBO Mario Kart” bit, which saw Pedro Pascal in a mashup of Mario Kart and The Last of Us, is proof of that. Everything goes into these segments, leaving them feeling like a high budgeted film. SNL has done plenty of horror parodies over the years, but the best will always be the one that should have been an actual movie, “Wes Anderson Horror Trailer.”
The amount of creativity that went into this segment, not just from the parodying of Wes Anderson, but the set design, costumes, and music, make it one of the most impressive things SNL has ever done. The segment spoofs Anderson’s unique style of filmmaking and turns it into a trailer for a horror film so hilarious, yet so entertaining, that it’s an absolute shame Wes Anderson wasn’t so inspired by it that it pushed him to make his own horror movie. There’s no doubt it would have been one of the most memorable films of the genre.
“Wes Anderson Horror Trailer” Spoofs Every Wes Anderson Trope
Released in 2013, the trailer is two minutes and forty-two seconds of pure off the wall zaniness, with every Wes Anderson and slasher movie trope smashed together at a furious pace. Frequent Saturday Night Live contributor Alec Baldwin plays the narrator, welcoming us to a movie coming this Halloween “that’s a new vision of horror like you’ve never seen before.” If that’s not an understatement, I don’t know what is. We open on a house at night, then a closeup of shoes slowly walking through the yard towards it. A knife from an unseen hand comes into frame, like this is the latest Halloween. We get ominous horror music, before Baldwin says the lines that turn this into something brilliant. “From the twisted mind of Wes Anderson…” The camera suddenly switches to a view of the approaching menacing presence. It’s a man in a mask with a chainsaw, but oh no, this isn’t Leatherface. This man is dressed in a suit, waving enthusiastically at the camera, while the very not scary “Me and Julio Down by the School Yard” by Paul Simon kicks in. It’s a song well known for its use in Anderson’s 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums. The most perfect Wes Anderson horror movie title then appears on the screen in that familiar text font: The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders. Get set for the most pretentious rip-off of The Strangers ever attempted.
SNL guest host Edward Norton, who has appeared in several of Anderson’s films, plays another Anderson collaborator, Owen Wilson, in a spot on impression as a man inside the house being stalked. He looks outside at the chainsaw wielding man and nonchalantly says, in that understated tone synonymous with many of Anderson’s characters, “Hey, hon, I think we’re about to get murdered.” He’s more curious than scared. From the distinct film color palette, the old-fashioned looking interior, and the way the camera pulls back without cutting, it all feels like peak Anderson. SNL featured player Noël Wells plays his terrified wife, Gwenyth Paltrow, with her fur coat and cigarette making her look like she just stepped off The Royal Tenenbaums set. “You don’t say,” she says, completely uninterested.
There’s Actually a Fun Horror Movie to Be Found in ‘SNL’s Wes Anderson Movie Parody
The playful knocks at Anderson continue with Norton looking through binoculars at the now group of masked strangers on the lawn. They don’t carry just your traditional weapons. No, one has a record player, one a falcon, there’s The Royal Tenenbaums twins in matching red tracksuits, and even Danny Glover. With these killers, you might get stabbed to death, but you can hear some good music and learn about falconry on the way out. These killers are sophisticated in more way than one though. There’s no scene of them writing in blood on the window. Nope, they toss a paper airplane through the window with a rather polite death threat written inside. As a violin plays, Norton reads the “communiqué” as he calls it. “Dear Homeowner: Can we kill you? -The Murderers.” It’s so hilarious that it just might be terrifying to have a crazed killer go against traditional means in such a manner. Norton types out his response on a typewriter, because of course there’s a typewriter. “Dear Murderers, No you may not! -The Homeowner.”
Norton as Wilson then instructs his kids to go to the panic room, before going to sit in an open yellow tent in the living room straight out of Moonrise Kingdom. His kids, played by Nasim Pedrad and John Milhiser, count their weapons as only Wes Anderson kids can. They’ve got a slingshot, a ship in a bottle, a protractor, a picture of Edith Piaf, and an assault rifle randomly thrown in toward the end. Those are all sure to do some damage. Just imagine the scene of a child with a protractor fighting a killer carrying a falcon. That’s pure movie magic right there.
The trailer then shows that the killers have made it inside and tied up the family. Baldwin next introduces us to Kate McKinnon as town constable Tilda Swinton, another Anderson favorite. “Hey, wow, we’re saved,” Edward Norton or Owen Wilson says. McKinnon barges in, not looking to taking the killers down, but asking, “Who here are the murderers?” She is promptly stabbed to death. “I see,” McKinnon says, before landing a perfect face plant.
The parody leans into that pretentious love some have of anything Anderson does just because, without first simply trying to understand it. We get onscreen blurbs of The New York Times saying, “You had me at Wes Anderson” and Fangoria saying, “Da Fuh?” Before the trailer goes, it introduces us to a whole list of Wes Anderson actors in the film from Jason Schwartzman (Kyle Mooney) to Adrien Brody (Michael O’Brien), the former bleeding from the mouth and the latter from the stump where his right arm use to be. There’s even a stop-motion mouse. Oh, do go on.
The ‘Saturday Night Live’ Trailer Parody Celebrate Wes Anderson Rather Than Mock Him
The trailer doesn’t make fun of Wes Anderson. It celebrates him and his one of a kind effort to filmmaking. In his blog, SNL‘s Director of Photography, Alex Buono, wrote, “Wes Anderson is one of the most idiosyncratic filmmakers of our time. His style is so unique that you might think it would be easy to satirize. But here’s the problem: turns out everyone has a different opinion about what MOST distinguishes Wes Anderson’s style. …And within a subculture as film-literate as the writers and producers of SNL, we were surrounded by astute Wes Anderson connoisseurs. Suddenly this spot had morphed from something I was dying to shoot into something I was terrified to shoot!”
The segment is done with love and respect and not an ounce of cruel mockery. The ones behind this love Anderson’s films. And whether they meant to or not, they’ve also showed just how great a Wes Anderson movie could be. His eccentricities and tropes are perfect for a genre that’s all about tropes and sameness. What doesn’t seem like it would go together actually fits perfectly. It’s like one of those mashup songs you find on YouTube of two very different songs put together to form something incredible and original. A Wes Anderson film could unite us all, bringing together the art film crowd with horror fanatics, to produce a work which could make an audience scream, laugh, and dance to what would surely be a great soundtrack. It’s not too late, Wes. You can still make it happen.
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