Automotive New Year’s Day commercials are usually centered around the cheerful Christmas atmosphere and include high-revving engines and fast-paced action, but Volvo’s newest ad for the New Year is entirely different. Centered around the XC60 crossover the ad shows four people waiting for New Year's Day in the forest, around a fire. But, while the scenery is appropriate if we look back upon pre-Christian traditions, the atmosphere is a bit gloomy. Not only do the four people watch the fire burn in silence, but there's also a narrator telling Lord Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam" poem, while church bells can be heard in the background.

As the two-minute video comes to an end, the narrator says "ring out the darkness of the land" and the camera rises from the ground (likely using a drone) to give a better view of the landscape, including the forest, the lake behind the participants, and the clear sky with big stars. The ad also offers a 360-degree video experience, meaning you can navigate to have a closer look at the trees, the sky, or the two XC60 crossovers. But if you ignore the cars or the big "Volvo" logo that appears in the sky toward the end, this commercials looks and sounds like the preview of a horror movie.

The atmosphere Volvo managed to create in this short film is absolutely fantastic and I think that this is the best New Year's Eve ad I've seen in a very long time. Granted, it might be a bit too cold to spend the night out in the forest (and probably creepy for some), but it's a nice break from all the flashy, consumerism-related commercials we see this time of the year.

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