If you were to scan the billing of an upcoming film that features Luke Wilson, Olivia Wilde, and Elisabeth Moss, it wouldn’t be outrageous to expect a somewhat dark yet quirky indie along the lines of The Skeleton Twins, Drinking Buddies, or The One I Love, in which the three respectively star. As the trailer for Meadowland displays almost immediately though, that’s not the film audiences are going to get.
Wilson and Wilde portray a couple in the midst of hopelessness and grief, roughly a year removed from the abduction of their young son. And although the trailer doesn’t explicitly reveal much about the story, it’s clear the loss has driven a wedge between them. Heavy, pounding music accompanies shots of the two struggling, mostly separate from one another, to overcome the fact that “it might just keep getting darker.” Wilson’s character is a New York City policeman, while Wilde’s seems to be slipping into the kind of activity a cop is supposed to investigate. Giovanni Ribisi, Moss, and John Leguizamo round out the cast of the film, which marks Reed Morano’s (the director of photography on The Skeleton Twins) directorial debut. Meadowland opens October 16.