The new trailer for Cats is enough to make the fur hair on your mane neck stand on end. You'll have to forgive me blurring the lines between the feline and the human, because after watching the 2-minute-long glimpse into a truly disturbing parallel universe, I'm no longer sure which is which. I'm left asking myself - where is my tail? Do I have a beard or whiskers?

What I'm trying to say is, it's changed me, and I don't think it's for the better.

You'll most likely be sure of only one thing after watching the Cats trailer: the images of dystopian horror you've just been confronted with will never leave you, not completely. One day, 10 years from now, you'll be mowing the lawn, your mind wandering pleasantly to those halcyon days of youthful exuberance past. A cat will run across the lawn, and there'll be something about it, some look in its eye, some oddly human feature. The cold sweats will start, the panic - rising to your throat now - will engulf you once more as you remember the cursed day that you stared, disbelieving and horrified, as several neutered, asexual - and yet at the same time weirdly intimate - part-human cats danced - yes danced - with such horrible grace that you were left asking yourself some pretty searching questions.

Memory? You'll never forget this as long as you live.

And just when you're sure it can't get any more surreal, James Corden pops up out of nowhere trying out a sort of cod-cockney accent that ushers fury into the conversation for the first time. Perhaps this is healthy - first comes terror, next comes a very real sense of dread, and then comes anger. The Cats trailer will leave you with many questions, but the most pressing one is simply 'why?'

Anyway, maybe we're all the foolish ones, maybe this is a glimpse of the future. Perhaps 'feline' will become a niche of cinema in much the same way as the road movie or the buddy film. For now though, we've been confronted with one of the most startlingly unnerving movie trailers of all time, and Twitter has got a few things to say on the subject.

The strap line for Cats - "This holiday season you will believe" - is strangely insistent, but perhaps prescient. Maybe, in the fullness of time (or more accurately, by Christmas) we'll be so desensitised to the notion of anthropomorphic cats that we'll sit in cinemas up and down the country openly weeping at Taylor Swift et al belting out show tunes through their whiskers. If that's not a thought to keep you up at night, I don't know what is.

The new trailer for Cats is enough to make the fur hair on your mane neck stand on end. You'll have to forgive me blurring the lines between the feline and the human, because after watching the 2-minute-long glimpse into a truly disturbing parallel universe, I'm no longer sure which is which. I'm left asking myself - where is my tail? Do I have a beard or whiskers?

What I'm trying to say is, it's changed me, and I don't think it's for the better.

You'll most likely be sure of only one thing after watching the Cats trailer: the images of dystopian horror you've just been confronted with will never leave you, not completely. One day, 10 years from now, you'll be mowing the lawn, your mind wandering pleasantly to those halcyon days of youthful exuberance past. A cat will run across the lawn, and there'll be something about it, some look in its eye, some oddly human feature. The cold sweats will start, the panic - rising to your throat now - will engulf you once more as you remember the cursed day that you stared, disbelieving and horrified, as several neutered, asexual - and yet at the same time weirdly intimate - part-human cats danced - yes danced - with such horrible grace that you were left asking yourself some pretty searching questions.

Memory? You'll never forget this as long as you live.

And just when you're sure it can't get any more surreal, James Corden pops up out of nowhere trying out a sort of cod-cockney accent that ushers fury into the conversation for the first time. Perhaps this is healthy - first comes terror, next comes a very real sense of dread, and then comes anger. The Cats trailer will leave you with many questions, but the most pressing one is simply 'why?'

Anyway, maybe we're all the foolish ones, maybe this is a glimpse of the future. Perhaps 'feline' will become a niche of cinema in much the same way as the road movie or the buddy film. For now though, we've been confronted with one of the most startlingly unnerving movie trailers of all time, and Twitter has got a few things to say on the subject.

The strap line for Cats - "This holiday season you will believe" - is strangely insistent, but perhaps prescient. Maybe, in the fullness of time (or more accurately, by Christmas) we'll be so desensitised to the notion of anthropomorphic cats that we'll sit in cinemas up and down the country openly weeping at Taylor Swift et al belting out show tunes through their whiskers. If that's not a thought to keep you up at night, I don't know what is.