Test Drive the World’s First Haptic Movie Trailer (But Only If You Have an iPhone)

Tying the world’s (supposedly) first haptic movie trailer into the upcoming Formula One racing film, F1, was clever. Releasing it for a film full of explosions would’ve been predictably boring. Almost any movie could do that, since so many of them revolve around heroes and villains blowing shit up these days.

the rumble matches the on-screen action

My attitude toward trailers is generally ambivalent. Actually, it may be even mildly hostile. It’s not the concept of a trailer that I object to, but rather that so many of them—especially in recent years—give away almost every plot twist, surprise, and plot point in the film.

I’ve sat through enough of them in theaters to which, by the end of the trailer, I felt like I’d seen the whole movie already. Oh, so the tension of the film appears to be whether the heroine ever escapes the Bad Room, and hey look, I guess she did because she’s in a car chase later, with her co-star dying in her arms.

When I know that I want to watch a movie (as I do with F1), I generally avoid trailers. But the F1 trailer is pretty sick. Feeling your iPhone rumble in your hands as the F1 cars rev and jockey for position is, frankly, awesome.

When Brad Pitt slips into the cockpit of his race car and fires up the engine, feeling my iPhone rumble in my hands got my pulse going. And when the in-cockpit view shows the front tires licking at the curbs, the rumble that came through the phone was perfectly in sync.

Watch the trailer here. And, duh, click on it through your iPhone. Borrow a friend’s iPhone if you don’t have your own. Come on, you know one. At least one. They’re those people with the pesky blue chat bubbles.

F1 arrives in theaters on a widespread release on June 27, so give the trailer a watch.