After the immense success of Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most desirable directors in Hollywood. Luckily, his next movie is on its way, and we’ve just received our first look.
On May 29, the official trailer for Kinds of Kindness dropped, and it’s more chaotic than I could have ever anticipated. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, I’m now even more eager to see it in theaters.
Early on in the trailer, Jesse Plemons’ character, who’s one of the main leads of Kinds of Kindness, says, “Open your eyes and look clearly at what’s going on around you.” Well, to be honest Jesse, I have no clue what’s going on around me. Despite being merely over a minute long, the trailer boasts some kind of funeral, a body being dragged across a hallway, Plemons being slapped by a woman (twice), a shot of Emma Stone doing an odd dance, teases of terrifying action, and bits of amusing dialogue. Oh, and did I mention that it ends with a black-and-white shot of dogs driving a car? Yeah, that happens.
Lanthimos’ previous work has been far from straightforward and ordinary, frankly speaking. However, his visionary work has proven that he’s on track to become one of the greatest directors in recent years. When you first took a look at the initial trailers for Poor Things, you likely also had no idea what was going on. Eventually, though, the movie was (rightly so) one of the best cinematic pieces of 2023 and a frontrunner at the 2024 Academy Awards.
If I had to break down what the storyline of Kinds of Kindness is based on the trailer alone, I’d have to take a few guesses. Certain storylines are teased therein, yet what I’ve seen so far is too vague for any assumptions to be made. Honestly, maybe that’s for the best. Maybe, like Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, it’s best if I don’t know what I’m getting myself into when I head into this particular film.
One of the reasons why Poor Things cemented itself as a one-of-a-kind theater experience is because most people knew little to nothing about it beforehand and were thus pleasantly surprised by the result. When it comes to Kinds of Kindness, I think I’d similarly like to go in blindfolded, especially since its reactions at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival — where it received a standing ovation and Jesse Plemons won an award for best performance by an actor — advertise it well enough.
