So the Cats official trailer works a lot better with a horror movie soundtrack than it does with its original music.
Cats is becoming a movie. The official trailer dropped yesterday showcasing what seems to be a relatively faithful recreation of the Tony Award-winning musical filled with top stars. Cast includes James Corden, Dame Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Sir Ian McKellan, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, and Francesca Hayward.
Based on the 1981 musical of the same name, Cats is about...well, cats. There’s a lot of dancing, a lot of singing, some metaphors about death and resurrection, and crucially, a bunch of people all done up in full-body tights and makeup to give them only the barest of feline resemblance.
For a certain generation, that last bit gave a lot of people nightmares. One Twitter user points out the issue with precise clarity.
The trailer pays homage to the original Broadway musical with similar full-body costumes and makeup, as well as additional CG editing to really make those faux-fur suits look like the real thing. This retro-future combo makes these nightmare amalgams of cat and human even worse but gave a few Twitter users an idea.
Instead of the lilting musical tones of the original trailer, they swapped the songs with the horror movie’s soundtrack and the net effect is far more powerful than the original.
Here we have one user swapping out for the Annihilation soundtrack.
And now another using the soundtrack to the movie Us.
That last one was so perfectly appropriate that it got the attention of Jordan Peele, director and producer of Us, who gave his seal of approval.
Cats will arrive in theaters for December 20, 2019. Hopefully it will have a limited release, or we fear that yet another generation will be terrified of these monstrous creatures and will one day grow up to replace a second Cats movie trailer’s music with contemporary horror film soundtracks as well. It’s an endless cycle.