Luckiest Girl Alive Trailer: Secrets Come Back To Haunt Mila Kunis' Perfect Life
The trailer for Netflix's latest original mystery-thriller is here, and "Luckiest Girl Alive" looks like it actually could be a cut above the streamer's recent lackluster movie offerings. While Netflix adaptations like "The Woman in the Window" offered more groans than thrills, this latest page-to-screen story already appears to be a more lively take on a popular mystery novel. The new film stars Mila Kunis in "Black Swan" paranoid thriller mode, and the "That '70s Show" actor suspiciously side-eyes her way through an intriguing storyline about secrets from her adolescence that come back to haunt her right when her life finally seems to be going perfectly.
Also, huge news for us "Halt and Catch Fire" fans out there: Scoot McNairy pops up! Here's the full trailer.
Maybe she's not so lucky
This trailer has all of the hallmarks of a thriller based on a book from the height of the post-"Gone Girl" era, which it is. The screenplay comes from Jessica Knoll, who wrote the novel of the same name in 2012. There's a woman working in journalism, a seemingly perfect relationship thrown into disarray, and a coolly perfected detachment from some past secret. There's also an unreliable narrator gimmick thrown in for good measure, as Mila's character Ani tells her husband-to-be (played by "American Horror Story" alum Finn Wittrock), "I don't know what's me and what part I invented."
These are all fairly tired tropes at this point, and the film's voice-over narration seems potentially aware of this, but the first look at "Luckiest Girl Alive" somehow gives these elements the potential to thrill again. In addition to Kunis, McNairy, and Wittrock, the movie's stacked cast also features "Friday Night Lights" star Connie Britton and, according to the official cast list, Jennifer Beals. There's also some nifty direction here from "The Sandman" filmmaker Mike Barker. When Ani remembers an incident from her past involving water, we see a flood start to creep up to the bottoms of her heels in the present day. The camera captures Kunis' dark intensity well, too, as Ani narrates about how she feels like a wind-up doll. An intense instrumental score underlines the whole thing.
While the full plot details for Knoll's novel can be found online, much of what makes "Luckiest Girl Alive" look interesting are the genuinely mysterious secrets hinted at in the trailer. What happened with McNairy's character? Who's the former classmate threatening her? What's exploding in that shot near the end? We'll find out when the movie drops on Netflix on October 7, 2022.