REST In Pieces. Clever. A killer (literally) tagline. You can find it on posters promoting the horror-thriller movie The Final Destination.
I am a movie-buff — but of a different sort.
While I do not stump out a lot of money to catch many films — my last two were Murderer and Orphan — I do keep up with cinematic developments.
I am a particularly big fan of advertisements and posters placed in newspapers and cinema lobbies.
It’s not the fancy artwork or other gimmicky visual elements on them that grab me but the taglines.
Perhaps my job as a journalist makes me monitor how creative or zany the marketers are in using the English language to plug a movie.
In my book, whoever they are, the people who can craft tantalising lines in posters are also stars in their own right, and are even deserving of an Oscar.
Within a sentence, or just three words — in the case of the tagline for The Final Destination — they give an instant summary of the movie and its thrills and spills.
Rest In Pieces — a nice play on the phrase Rest In Peace when a person dies — is one such example, promising that the victims on screen will never go quietly in the night.
What else has put a smile on my lips?
How about "Here Comes The Bribe" from romantic comedy The Proposal? Here, a female boss needs a marriage favour from a male subordinate to avoid being deported back to her homeland.
Or how about "Meet Your Ancestors" from the comedy Year One? You know that you are going to have a great time rooting for Jack Black playing an anti-hero caveman.
What about "Houston, We Have A Problem" from Apollo 13, about an ill-fated space mission?
Local film-makers have also come up with some great taglines. Kelvin Tong's supernatural thriller Rule #1 dares you to believe in this blurb — Rule #1: There Are No Ghosts.
But I have not come across any taglines for Jack Neo movies. He really should try them, instead of slapping ridiculous come-ons like "hor-medy" on the posters of his current Where Got Ghost? movie.
Hor-medy? That's a frighteningly bad use of English.