It started with a Cocteau Twins track. If you were watching TV or sitting in a darkened theater in late 2009, you probably remember that ethereal, swirling music—"Alice" by Cocteau Twins—drifting over shots of a snowy suburban Pennsylvania. Then came the voice. "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."
The The Lovely Bones 2009 trailer didn't just market a movie. It basically did the impossible by trying to sell a "supernatural thriller" that was actually a devastating meditation on grief and the afterlife.
Honestly, the marketing team had a nightmare of a task. Alice Sebold’s novel was a literal juggernaut, selling millions of copies and breaking hearts globally. But how do you show a "In-Between" heaven on screen without it looking like a cheesy screensaver? Peter Jackson, fresh off King Kong and Lord of the Rings, was the guy they trusted to do it. The trailer was our first real glimpse into whether he’d nailed that delicate balance between a grisly crime story and a whimsical dreamscape.
People were obsessed. They still are, actually. You can go to YouTube right now and find comments from three months ago of people saying the trailer is better than the movie itself. That’s a bold claim, but there’s a reason for it.
The Visual Language of the The Lovely Bones 2009 Trailer
The trailer relies heavily on contrast. You have these very grounded, grainy 1970s aesthetics—mustard yellow turtlenecks, station wagons, and those creepy wide-collar shirts—juxtaposed against the "In-Between."
When the The Lovely Bones 2009 trailer first dropped, the CGI was the main talking point. Jackson used his Weta Digital powerhouse to create a world that reacted to Susie’s emotions. Remember the giant ships in bottles crashing on the shore? Or the field of grain that turns into an ocean? It looked expensive. It looked "Jackson-esque." But more importantly, it captured that weird, disjointed logic of a dream.
Stanley Tucci's transformation was the other big "wow" factor. He’s unrecognizable. With the comb-over, the spectacles, and that unsettlingly calm voice, he became the personification of every parent's worst nightmare. The trailer wisely gives him very little dialogue. It lets his eyes do the work. It’s creepy as hell.
Why the Music Choice Was a Stroke of Genius
You can't talk about this trailer without talking about the music. Using "Alice" was a masterstroke because it feels timeless. It doesn't scream "2009," and it doesn't scream "1973." It sits in that middle ground, much like Susie Salmon herself.
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Music supervisors often lean on orchestral swells to tell an audience how to feel. Here, the dream-pop vibes created a sense of unease. It felt beautiful but wrong. It prepared us for a story where a girl is watching her family fall apart from a place of absolute beauty. If they had used a standard thriller score, the movie would have been marketed as a generic slasher. It wasn't that. It was something much more lonely.
Expectation vs. Reality: The Trailer's Legacy
Looking back, the The Lovely Bones 2009 trailer might have been a bit too good at its job. It promised a visual masterpiece that leaned into the tension of the hunt for a killer. When the film actually arrived, critics were divided. Some felt the "Heaven" sequences were too garish or distracted from the raw emotional power of the book.
But the trailer? The trailer remains a masterclass in editing. It manages to condense the entire emotional arc of the Salmon family—Mark Wahlberg’s desperation, Susan Sarandon’s eccentric coping mechanisms, and Saoirse Ronan’s luminous innocence—into about two and a half minutes.
- The Casting: This was the world's real introduction to Saoirse Ronan as a powerhouse lead. We’d seen her in Atonement, sure, but here she was the anchor.
- The Tone: It promised a "whodunit" where we already knew who did it. The tension came from the "will they find out?" aspect.
- The Director: It was Peter Jackson moving away from blockbusters into "prestige" drama, though he couldn't leave his love for big visuals behind.
I think the reason we still talk about this specific teaser is that it captures a very specific era of filmmaking. We were right on the cusp of everything becoming a franchise or a superhero movie. This was a big-budget, R-rated (eventually PG-13) adaptation of a literary phenomenon. It felt like an event.
Technical Details You Might Have Missed
If you rewatch the The Lovely Bones 2009 trailer today, look at the color grading. The scenes in the "real world" are often desaturated or skewed toward cold blues and earthy browns. The In-Between is hyper-saturated. This wasn't just a stylistic choice; it was a narrative tool. It tells you that for Susie, the world of the living is fading, while her new reality is becoming overwhelmingly vivid.
There's a specific shot of the sinkhole—the place where the evidence is hidden. The way the trailer cuts between the beauty of the cornfield and the dark, claustrophobic reality of that hole is genuinely jarring. It’s effective editing because it mimics the trauma of the story itself. One minute life is normal, the next, it's gone.
The Cultural Impact of the Marketing
The trailer didn't just sell a movie; it reignited book sales. It forced people to reckon with the heavy themes of the novel again. It's weird to think about now, but in 2009, this was the "must-see" movie of the winter season.
There was a lot of talk about the PG-13 rating. Fans of the book were worried the movie would soften the edges of the story. The The Lovely Bones 2009 trailer did a lot of work to reassure people that the "darkness" was still there, even if the more graphic elements were handled through suggestion rather than overt gore. It relied on atmosphere. Shadows. The sound of a door locking. That's always scarier than seeing the actual act.
How to Re-evaluate the Movie Today
If you're going back to watch the film because the trailer sparked a memory, go in with fresh eyes. Forget the 2009 hype.
- Focus on the performances. Stanley Tucci deserved every bit of his Oscar nomination. It’s a brave, repulsive, and meticulously acted role.
- Watch the lighting. The way the light changes as Susie moves between different "levels" of her afterlife is technically brilliant.
- Listen to the Brian Eno score. While the trailer used Cocteau Twins, the actual film is scored by Eno. It’s ambient, moody, and perfectly fits the "Jackson-verse" version of heaven.
The The Lovely Bones 2009 trailer represents a moment when cinema was trying to figure out how to use digital effects for internal, emotional stories rather than just blowing stuff up. It didn't always work, but man, it was ambitious.
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To get the most out of a re-watch, compare the trailer's pacing to the film's first act. You'll notice the trailer actually follows the structure of the book more closely than the final edit of the movie does in some ways. It hits those emotional beats—the loss, the searching, the near-misses—with a precision that's hard to maintain over two hours.
Next Steps for Film Fans:
Check out the "making of" featurettes specifically regarding the Weta Digital environments. Seeing how they turned a green-screen room into the "In-Between" explains a lot about why the visuals in the trailer looked so groundbreaking at the time. You should also look up the original teaser vs. the full theatrical trailer; the teaser is much more atmospheric and relies almost entirely on Saoirse Ronan's narration, which is arguably more effective. Finally, read the 2009 interviews with Peter Jackson about the "visual translation" of the book—it adds a lot of context to why certain shots in the trailer look the way they do.