Sean Parker
Maika Monroe is already a scream queen at twenty-nine years old. Sure, she’s done some big-name films from prominent directors like Jason Reitman’s Labor Day, Sofia Coppola‘s The Bling Ring, and Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day: Resurgence. Still, her performances in indie horror films like It Follows and Shudder’s recent film Watcher account for why we can’t get enough of the actress. Yesterday, Paramount released the trailer for Monroe’s latest film, Significant Other, which is already giving us chills.
Significant Other is the latest film from Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, the guys who brought us 2015’s Body and 2019’s Villains, which also starred Maika Monroe. Berk and Olsen are venturing out from the suburban basements we were bound to in those outings, taking us to the Pacific Northwest for a backpacking trip with an ominous tone similar to their dystopian vampire sequel Stake Land II: The Stakelander. In the Significant Other trailer, Monroe plays Ruth, who, along with her boyfriend Harry (The White Lotus‘ Jake Lacy), make their way through the woods. Harry seems to be laying it on pretty thick, making overtures of love as grandiose as the view from which he appears to be pushed. The arrival of two strangers, finding Ruth in a state of amnesia, is even more peculiar, and I believe that’s what makes the trailer much more intriguing.
Showing serious duality, the Significant Other trailer shows Ruth as a frantic pill-popping two-faced individual. While it seems the trailer shows us a lot, we can’t be sure at this point what we’re seeing exactly. Are things being told linearly? Is Ruth projecting her violent thoughts onto her relationship? What’s with that blue goo? Was there some big weird bug in a cave? Is someone stalking Ruth and Harry in the woods? Or has Ruth gone all Jason Voorhees, deciding to take up the mantle of a psycho-woods-slasher? The Significant Other trailer leaves us with a ton of questions, and while finding out looks like a hell of a time, it also looks as if nothing is at all what it seems.
Significant Other premieres on Paramount Plus on October 7. New York Comic Con attendees can catch the film’s World Premiere screening on October 6 in Room 401 at the Javitz Convention Center. Cast and filmmakers will be in attendance.
