The official trailer for Netflix’s Shimmer Lake is here. The inventive, darkly comic crime thriller features an ensemble cast led by Rainn Wilson, best known as Dwight Schrute from The Office, as Andy Sikes, a man who gets entangled in a chain of events involving a heist gone bad. Benjamin Walker will play Andy’s brother Zeke, a local sheriff who attempts to untangle the crime and its many diverse participants.
A story told in reverse involving many shady characters, the inventive Shimmer Lake ostensibly bills itself as a cross between Memento and Fargo. It marks the directorial debut of Oren Uziel, who wrote the screenplay of the new upcoming Mortal Kombat adaptation and also penned the script for 22 Jump Street. Now, the first trailer finally unveils Uziel’s complex creation.
Netflix have released the official trailer for Shimmer Lake, which you can watch above. It focuses on the aforementioned Zeke and Andy, the two brothers who end up playing a game of cat-and-mouse with each other as Zeke dedicates himself to “giving this town a bath” while Andy gets in way too deep with the wrong people. There’s also a visual cue to the movie’s backward narrative, showing a cabin by the titular Shimmer Lake burning in reverse.
The movie also stars Rob Corddry and Ron Livingston as a pair of (probably shady) private investigators, as well as Wyatt Russell, Stephanie Sigman and Adam Pally. The movie is produced by Footprint Features, a young company born out of theater that specializes in “character-driven” storytelling.
The trailer for Shimmer Lake certainly teases a movie with loads of potential. It promises a uniquely structured story, a complex web of characters, and a chance to deliver plenty of darkly humorous thrills. Uziel showed his comedic chops with his script for 22 Jump Street, and the comedy experience of much of the cast has a good chance to breathe life into Shimmer Lake. Wilson, in particular, looks like he has the potential to deliver a memorable performance.
Clearly it’s one of the most anticipated Netflix movies of the year for a reason. But there’s also plenty of uncertainty surrounding Uziel at the helm – directorial debuts always carry some risk. That said, he obviously pulled in plenty of talent to work with him and the narrative structure of Shimmer Lake shows that the young filmmaker has plenty of ambition.
Shimmer Lake premieres June 9 on Netflix.