The production company behind The Hunger Games and Saw movies, Lions Gate, dropped the trailer for their next film, Miller’s Girl, a thriller starring Scream’s Jenna Ortega and Black Panther’s Martin Freeman.
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Before you get too excited, you should know the cast is not why the film and its trailer are getting attention. It’s a little message at the end of the video that generates most of the buzz, and not for reasons favorable to any box office hopes the movie had.
At the end of the trailer, they present a warning: “There are complex themes that appear in this film.” Those themes, as well as the plot, concern #MeToo and the disparity of power between Freeman’s character, a teacher, and Ortega, an 18-year-old student and budding writer.
“A talented young writer (Jenna Ortega) embarks on a creative odyssey when her teacher (Martin Freeman) assigns a project that entangles them both in an increasingly complex web. As lines blur and their lives intertwine, professor and protégé must confront their darkest selves while straining to preserve their individual sense of purpose and the things they hold most dear,” according to the official synopsis.
The trailer also directs viewers to Lions Gate’s website where they will find a list of resources designated to deal with and educate people on the subject matter. Predictably, the list consists of social justice organizations and NGOs such as the National Domestic Violence Hotline, National Women’s Law Center, UN Women, and Me Too.
Other resources given are RAINN, The Trevor Project, and Rise. Aside from A Call To Men (an org that is really about “molding boys and young men,” per its website, in the spirit of everything else named), nothing is mentioned that even pretends to advocate for male victims.
This is problematic because the trailer for Miller’s Girl leaves the impression that Ortega’s character is crazy and manipulating her professor or abusing him. In fairness, she could be a victim whose trauma manifests itself in either Cruel Intentions style or closer in vein to Fatal Attraction.
However, the clips spliced together impart very little doubt that Ortega is the instigator and the scenario is no more than entrapment. Maybe there is an unexpected twist coming, but that and its credibility won’t be laid bare until the film opens on January 26, 2024.