Jake Gyllenhaal & Carey Mulligan’s marriage falls apart in Wildlife trailer

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Based upon the novel by Richard Ford, WILDLIFE stars Ed Oxenbould (THE VISIT) as Joe, a fourteen-year-old who watches the marriage between his parents (Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan) slowly implode when his father decides to leave them behind in order to fight an uncontrollable forest fire. WILDLIFE serves as the directorial debut of Paul Dano (SWISS ARMY MAN), who also co-wrote the film along with Zoe Kazan. The latest trailer for the upcoming film certainly looks beautiful as well as hints at some powerful performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Mulligan, and Ed Oxenbould, but when our own Chris Bumbray reviewed the film at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, he found that he wasn't quite as enamoured with it as he thought.

"[WILDLIFE is] hard to sit through if you’re not patient – a thing that’s tougher to be at a fest when you’re seeing four-to-five movies a day. Some empathy was needed to make this able to connect to an audience and WILDLIFE has been totally drained of that feeling," Bumbray said. "Dano has chops as a director, that’s for certain, and it’s well-made, well-acted film, but it’s also slow and a hard watch. I prefer my films a little less clinical, but one can't deny it does what it set out to do."

The official synopsis for WILDLIFE:

IFC Films presents WILDLIFE, the directorial debut of Paul Dano (THERE WILL BE BLOOD, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE), co-written along with Zoe Kazan (THE BIG SICK). Elegantly adapted from Richard Ford’s novel of the same name, Carey Mulligan (MUDBOUND, AN EDUCATION) delivers one of her finest performances to date as Jeanette, a complex woman whose self-determination and self-involvement disrupts the values and expectations of a 1960s nuclear family. Fourteen-year-old Joe played by newcomer Ed Oxenbould, is the only child of Jeanette (Mulligan) and Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal)—a housewife and a golf pro—in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job—and his sense of purpose—he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves. Suddenly forced into the role of an adult, Joe witnesses his mother’s struggle as she tries to keep her head above water. With precise details and textures of its specific time and place, WILDLIFE commits to the viewpoint of a teenage boy observing the gradual dissolution of his parents’ marriage.

WILDLIFE will hit theaters on October 19, 2018.