The Zone Of Interest Trailer Was So Disturbing, I Almost Couldn’t Watch The Movie (But I’m Glad I Did)

The following article contains discussions of genocide.

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest was announced to audiences with a trailer that despite having no spoken words, was enough to make me equally disturbed and excited for the 2023 historical drama. There are few movies like The Zone of Interest and a lot of people did not know what to make of it when Glazer first dropped his 2023 Holocaust film. That difficulty in understanding exactly what The Zone of Interest is doing is probably why the Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience scores were so different soon after the film was released on streaming.

Over a year after its premiere, general audiences are finally coming around to the film, as they should, and the audience score is getting closer to the well-deserved 93% critics score it currently has on Rotten Tomatoes. The Zone of Interest was nominated for five awards at the 96th Academy Awards, including for Best Picture and Best Director, winning for Best Sound and Best International Feature. I’ve previously written about how affecting The Zone of Interest was to me personally, but even the trailer managed to leave a haunting impression.

The Zone Of Interest Trailer Is Incredibly Disturbing

Johnathan Glazer’s Trailer Only Hints At The Atrocities Underneath

The Zone of Interest trailer is only one minute long, but from the opening shot to the last one, the hair was standing up on the back of my neck. It opens with the “Festival De Cannes” award on a deep red background. What should just be the opening production companies and obligatory award nominations and wins are made immediately unnerving by the color of the background. It’s not a pretty shade of red. It’s something much meaner. To add to my disquiet, the rhythmic droning noises that score the entire trailer begin in earnest.

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There’s a rumbling noise like heavy trucks rolling over a gravel road and every few beats, a sharp, alien throb punctuates the score as scenes from the film quickly flash on screen to the rhythm of the pulsing throbs. I can’t quite put my finger on what that almost electric beat sounds like. The only thing I can compare it to are those videos of people throwing blocks of ice on frozen lakes, and the haunting, “zapping” noise the scattered ice makes. Or maybe it sounds like someone pounding on a window, heard from the other side.

The trailer continues with the rhythm. Ominous quotes from critics are dovetailed with scenes of the Höss family going about their daily lives, trying on new clothes, throwing picnics, doing chores, even sleeping. There are some large buildings behind the beautiful walls of their home, but with such quick cuts, it’s hard to know exactly what they are. Your heart is steadily climbing up your throat until one of the final quick scenes: a young boy with a flashlight looking at something under his bedsheets. He picks it up and curiously inspects a couple of human teeth.

I was disturbed from the start, and by the end of The Zone of Interest trailer, I was downright horrified, and, totally ready to see what this film could possibly entail. A good trailer sticks with you and The Zone of Interest certainly stuck with me. I found myself going back to it over and over, to try and wrest out meaning and clues that I could feel just under the cold surface.

Watching The Zone Of Interest Is An Affecting Experience

The Zone Of Interest Merges The Mundane With The Monstrous

While I knew that The Zone of Interest was going to be something affecting from the trailer, I couldn’t have guessed just how upsetting and uniquely shocking it would end up being. The trailer, for the most part, tells the entire story of the movie, just condensed. Nothing much happens in The Zone of Interest and yet everything happens. We see the real-life Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and the rest of their family enjoying the stately life that Rudolf’s high-ranking position in Nazi Germany affords them.

At first, it’s unclear what it is Rudolf does, just as it’s unclear what those buildings are beyond their garden walls. As The Zone of Interest marches on, however, it becomes horrifyingly clear what is housed under those roofs. The black smoke bellowing from chimneys, trains constantly pulling in and out of the train yard beyond, Hedwig’s unending supply of new clothes and jewelry, a jawbone found in the river, that is the Auschwitz concentration camp just outside the Höss’s home.

The realization of what’s happening hits every viewer at a different time and seeing that ripple through a room or theater, is a darkly beguiling experience.

The realization of what’s happening hits every viewer at a different time and seeing that ripple through a room or theater is a darkly beguiling experience. No one in the Höss family shows that they give a second thought to the atrocities taking place in their backyard, happy to live their rich lives, literally built on genocide. The only moment that shows the horrors may be affecting them as much as they affect us comes at the end of The Zone of Interest.

Rudolf has just finished attending an SS party where he waxed poetic to his wife about how all he could imagine was what would be the most efficient way to gas the attendees. As he leaves his office, he stops. Suddenly, he vomits on the floor. He dabs his lips and moves on. It’s a haunting ending, punctuated by modern scenes of custodians cleaning the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. This was an unnatural evil, so abhorrent to humanity that it made the perpetrators physically ill, and they carried on anyway. Chilling.

Sound In The Zone Of Interest Is The Film’s Most Powerful Component

Johnnie Burns’ Sound Design Won Him An Oscar

Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel) standing in front of Auschwitz in The Zone of Interest

Sound is Jonathan Glazer’s secret weapon in The Zone of Interest. That’s not my original take, by the way, as the Academy did award the film Best Sound. It’s fascinating to me that Glazer, and his sound designers, Johnnie Burn and Tarn Willers, were able to craft two distinctly frightening soundscapes with the trailer and within the movie itself. The trailer can’t capture the sounds of the feature film, but the unnerving beat serves as an effectively upsetting piece of sound design, that still only hints at the larger piece.

Glazer’s movie is filmed almost like a reality show, with fixed cameras placed throughout the house, giving uninterrupted views of the Höss family and their home.

Within the film, sounds play a critical part in the feeling of The Zone of Interest. Glazer’s movie is filmed almost like a reality show, with fixed cameras placed throughout the house, giving uninterrupted views of the Höss family and their home. It’s like they’re on a hidden camera reality show, and we’re waiting for a host to come around the corner. Along with the mundane sounds of chatter, matches striking, and doors opening, there are other noises.

Dogs bark loudly. Trains whistle and churn constantly. Soldiers shout before pops and crackles signal a machine gun was just fired. Then there are the screams. They aren’t loud, but they’re enough to disquiet anyone paying too close attention. I wanted to yell out to the Höss family. How could they not hear it? That’s the point of The Zone of Interest. They can hear it. They just choose to ignore it. The Zone of Interest trailer teases the horror. The film puts it in your face and reminds you of the price of refusing to pay attention and listen.