The world is quiet here.
At least, it was -- until a sinister trailer for Netflix's upcoming adaptation of Lemony Snicket's beloved A Series of Unfortunate Events appeared on YouTube.
There are 13 books in Snicket's -- a.k.a. pseudonymous author Daniel Handler's -- gloomy millennial touchstone, which follows the melancholy adventures of the luckless Baudelaire siblings. The books were published between 1999 and 2006; Nickelodeon Movies adapted the first three titles into a film released in 2004, starring Jim Carrey as the dastardly Count Olaf. But though the film was a success, its planned sequels were never made.
[seealso URL="www.mashable.com/2015/05/11/lemony-snicket-twitter-fiction-festival/"]
Now, though, pop cultural savior Netflix is developing a new take on the series -- and though details about the show are few and far between, we do at least have this Easter egg-filled unofficial teaser, which indicates this new series may nail the books' morose tone.
The 35-second teaser is filled with tantalizing references to Handler's -- sorry, Snicket's -- unfortunate universe, from the name of its YouTube uploader to the logo that appears in its final seconds. (Netflix, for the record, told Mashable that the professional-looking clip "was not released by Netflix" and is "not anything official," though that may be to preserve the illusion that the trailer was posted by a Snicket character.)
Here are a few of the things we spotted in the trailer:
The video was supposedly uploaded by Eleanora Poe, a minor character from the books; she's the editor-in-chief of a newspaper called The Daily Punctilio, which at one point employed Lemony Snicket as its theater critic.
The spooky song that scores the trailer is The Dresden Dolls' "Missed Me." The trailer opens, however, with a shot of a record by The Gothic Archies, which is a side project of Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt. The group wrote and performed songs on every Unfortunate Events audiobook.
Among the old-timey objects crowding the room where the trailer takes place is a birdcage, probably a reference to the one Olaf uses to trap baby Sunny Baudelaire in the series' first book.
This evil eye symbol is all over the trailer -- as well as the book series, where it represents a mysterious, nefarious organization called VFD.
Jars that appear to contain snake skins point toward the series' second novel, The Reptile Room, in which the cursed Baudelaire siblings go to live with herpetologist Montgomery Montgomery.
A newspaper clipping refers to the terrible fire -- probably set by Count Olaf -- that killed the Baudelaire's parents. There's also a pair of tickets for a play called The Marvelous Marriage, which Olaf uses in book 1 to try to trick Violet Baudelaire into marrying him; the marriage license Violet is forced to sign at the end of the play; and a ribbon, which clever Violet uses throughout the series to tie her hair back when she's working up an invention.
Mushroom Minutiae appears in book 11, The Grim Grotto. The object in the jar could be the Medusoid Mycelium, a deadly mushroom that appears in the series' final three books.
This sampler nods toward book 4's main location, the eponymous Miserable Mill; the wig may belong to Olaf, who impersonates a female receptionist in that volume. Crows crowd the titular town in book 7, The Vile Village.
Bookish Klaus Baudelaire's glasses sit atop a pile of volumes including How to Start Fires, likely one of the most-read titles in Olaf's library. (Arson is a recurring motif throughout the series. We told you it was gloomy.)
Olaf's house, where the Baudelaires are brought in book 1, is disgustingly filthy -- the creepy crawlies, as well as the eye-covered dishes, indicate that we're definitely in his lair.
The jar contains a blood-sucking leech from Lake Lachrymose, the setting of book 3, The Wide Window. The show's tagline, "Something unfortunate is coming," also appears at the end of the trailer over an image of dark, murky water -- which could be the lake, or the sea that the Baudelaires explore in a submarine in book 11.
Then, of course, there's this final shot, featuring several of the clues we've seen already as well as a photograph of the Baudelaires (with their faces snipped out), a key to a hotel room -- probably the Hotel Denouement, from book 12 (with a bonus reference to The Shining's room 237) -- and, of course, the silhouette of Olaf himself, looking as angular and evil as ever.
But even though Olaf dominates the trailer, he's not the only character who "appears" in it: The clip closes on a Netflix logo being typed out on an old-fashioned typewriter. Who's writing? Simple: Snicket himself.