It was late 2009 when the world first saw the footage. We were sitting in darkened theaters or hunched over clunky desktop monitors, waiting to see how Peter Jackson—the man who turned Middle-earth into a cinematic reality—would handle a story as delicate and devastating as Alice Sebold’s bestseller. When the lovely bones trailer finally dropped, it didn't just promote a movie. It created a mood that some people still haven't quite shaken off.
The trailer starts with a simple, chilling premise. A girl named Susie Salmon. Like the fish. She was fourteen when she was murdered on December 6, 1973.
Most trailers for thrillers or dramas try to hide the "inciting incident" to keep you guessing. Not this one. Within the first thirty seconds, the trailer establishes the grim reality of the plot: Susie is already gone, and she’s watching her family from a "In-Between" heaven. It was a risky marketing move. Honestly, it shouldn't have worked as well as it did, but the juxtaposition of 1970s suburban normalcy with the surreal, neon-soaked afterlife of Jackson’s imagination made it impossible to look away.
The Visual Language of the In-Between
What really caught people off guard about the lovely bones trailer was the color palette. If you remember the vibe of 2009, most "serious" films were desaturated, gritty, and gray. Jackson went the opposite direction. He gave us a heaven that looked like a Maxfield Parrish painting brought to life.
Giant ships in bottles crashing against rocky shores. Golden fields that stretched into forever. It was beautiful, but it felt deeply lonely. That’s the nuance that most people missed on the first watch. The trailer used these grand, sweeping visuals to contrast with the claustrophobic grief happening back on Earth. You see Mark Wahlberg’s character, Jack Salmon, obsessively building model ships, his face etched with a kind of manic desperation that only a grieving parent can truly understand.
The trailer leaned heavily into the "thriller" aspect of the story, too. We got glimpses of Stanley Tucci as George Harvey. He was unrecognizable. The comb-over, the spectacles, the quiet, predatory stillness. Even in a two-minute clip, Tucci managed to make the audience's skin crawl without saying more than a few words. It’s a masterclass in tension. The way the trailer cuts between Susie’s ethereal wandering and Harvey’s methodical, terrifyingly normal life in the house next door is why people were so hyped—and so nervous—to see the full film.
Music and the Cocteau Twins Influence
You can't talk about that trailer without talking about the music. It used "Alice" by the Cocteau Twins. It was an inspired choice. Elizabeth Fraser’s ethereal, almost unintelligible vocals provided the perfect auditory backdrop for a story about a girl caught between two worlds.
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The music starts soft. It builds. It feels like a dream that is slowly turning into a nightmare, which is basically the entire arc of the story. Brian Eno handled the actual film score, but that trailer music did a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of setting the emotional stakes. It told the audience: This isn't just a crime story. This is a poem about loss.
Why the Marketing Diverged from the Book
If you’ve read the novel, you know it’s a tough hang. It’s brutal. The first chapter is one of the most harrowing sequences in modern literature.
The marketing team behind the lovely bones trailer had a massive problem to solve. How do you sell a movie about the rape and murder of a child to a PG-13 audience? They did it by focusing on the "mystery" and the visual splendor. They highlighted the investigation—Susie’s sister Lindsey sensing the truth about the neighbor, the father’s descent into obsession.
Some critics at the time felt this was a bit of a "bait and switch." The trailer promised a supernatural detective story. What the movie actually delivered was a fractured, highly stylized meditation on grief that didn't always land its punches. But as a piece of standalone content? That trailer is a work of art. It captured the "lovely" part of the title perfectly, even if it had to soften the "bones" part to get people through the door.
The Saoirse Ronan Factor
We also have to talk about Saoirse Ronan. At the time, she was primarily known for Atonement, where she played a character everyone basically hated. This trailer had to rebrand her as the heart of the story.
Her eyes. That’s what stayed with everyone. Those bright blue eyes looking down at her family, filled with a mix of longing and a strange, celestial wisdom. The trailer relied heavily on close-ups of Ronan’s face to ground the heavy CGI elements. Without her performance acting as an anchor, the "In-Between" sequences might have looked like a high-budget screensaver. She made the stakes feel real. When she says, "I was here for a moment, and then I was gone," it hits like a physical blow.
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Technical Mastery and 2009 Limitations
Looking back at the lovely bones trailer now, from the perspective of 2026, the CGI in the afterlife scenes has aged... interestingly. In 2009, it was cutting-edge. Weta Digital was pushing the boundaries of what was possible with fluid simulations and light rendering.
In the trailer, you see a scene where a giant tree loses its leaves, and they turn into birds. It’s a stunning sequence. But there’s a certain "uncanny valley" quality to the landscapes that actually works in the film's favor. It feels "wrong" because it’s not supposed to be Earth. It’s a mental construct of a fourteen-year-old girl. The trailer highlighted these moments to show that Jackson hadn't lost his touch for the fantastical, even if he was moving away from the Orcs and Elves of his previous work.
Misconceptions About the Tone
A lot of people remember the trailer as being "scary." It’s actually more "suspenseful" than scary. It’s the difference between a jump scare and a slow-building sense of dread.
- The shot of the rose petals falling.
- The flashlight beam cutting through the cornfield.
- The sound of a door locking.
These are the tropes of a horror movie, but they are edited with the rhythm of a drama. This tonal ambiguity is why the movie remains such a polarizing piece of cinema. It tried to be everything at once: a coming-of-age story, a murder mystery, a fantasy epic, and a grief counselor. The trailer succeeded in making that mash-up look seamless, even if the final film struggled to maintain that balance over a two-hour runtime.
Comparing the US and International Teasers
Interestingly, not all versions of the lovely bones trailer were created equal. The international versions tended to lean much harder into the "thriller" elements. They focused more on the cat-and-mouse game between Lindsey Salmon and George Harvey.
The US domestic trailer was much more focused on the family unit. It wanted you to feel for Susan Sarandon’s eccentric grandmother character and Rachel Weisz’s grieving mother. This highlights a classic studio strategy: sell the emotion to the domestic market and the action to the international one. If you go back and watch both today, the emotional version is the one that sticks. It’s the one that captures the soul of Sebold’s writing.
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What We Can Learn from This Trailer Today
In an era where movie trailers often give away the entire plot—including the ending—there is something refreshing about the restraint shown here. Yes, we know Susie dies. But we don't know if her family finds peace. We don't know if Harvey gets caught. We don't know what the "In-Between" actually represents.
The trailer did its job. It created a "theatrical hook." It made you want to know how it felt to be Susie Salmon.
If you are a student of film or a casual fan of Peter Jackson, re-watching this trailer is a great exercise in seeing how editing can manipulate emotion. Notice the pacing. The way the cuts speed up as the danger increases, then suddenly stop for a moment of quiet, heartbreaking stillness. It’s a rhythmic piece of storytelling that stands on its own, regardless of how you feel about the movie itself.
Actionable Next Steps for Fans
If you’re looking to dive deeper into the world of The Lovely Bones or the work of Peter Jackson during this era, here is how you should spend your time:
- Watch the "The Making of" Featurettes: Specifically look for the segments on the production design of the "In-Between." The physical sets they built to merge with the CGI are fascinating.
- Read the Original Novel: If you’ve only seen the movie or the trailer, the book is a different beast entirely. It’s much darker, more visceral, and provides context that the PG-13 rating simply couldn't touch.
- Analyze the Color Grading: Watch the trailer again and pay attention to how the colors change when the scene moves from the Salmon household to George Harvey’s house. The use of "warm" vs. "cold" tones is a textbook example of visual storytelling.
- Listen to the Full Soundtrack: Beyond the Cocteau Twins, Brian Eno’s work on this film is underrated. It’s ambient, haunting, and perfectly captures the feeling of being "in-between."
The legacy of the lovely bones trailer isn't just about the movie it promoted. It’s about a specific moment in film history where big-budget directors were taking massive swings on experimental, emotionally heavy stories. It reminds us that even in the face of tragedy, there is a certain kind of beauty to be found in the way we remember those we've lost.