With just a few weeks until it debuts on the streaming service, Netflix has unveiled the first trailer for the upcoming indie Shimmer Lake, which is slated to arrive June 9. This dark comedy is set during the aftermath of a bank robbery in a small town, but nothing is as it seems, including the actual format of the movie itself. While we can’t exactly tell from the trailer, this movie is told in reverse time.
Netflix debuted the trailer for this darkly comic crime thriller on YouTube today, which follows a local sheriff named Zeke Sikes (Benjamin Walker) hunting three bank robbery suspects, one of whom is his brother Andy (Rainn Wilson). From the trailer’s opening moments, we can tell that Zeke is a straight shooter, so to speak, telling his young niece Sally (Isabel Dove) that everyone in town thinks they can do whatever they want with no repercussions. When he ponders what’s the point of being the only clean person in a town that’s completely dirty, Sally says that her mom gives her a bath when she’s dirty. Zeke responds by saying he’s ready to give this whole town a bath.
Zeke’s brother Andy, along with Ed (Wyatt Russell) and Chris (Mark Rendall), were responsible for robbing the bank, but we see in this trailer that Ed screwed over his partners, leaving them high and dry and taking the money for himself. We also see scenes with Andy and another woman named Steph (Stephanie Sigman), who Andy is seemingly planning to leave town with, once he gets a hold of the money Ed stole. There is also a strange scene with Andy confronting Brad (John Michael Higgins), who seems to be the bank manager, since he was seen leaving the bank earlier in the trailer, just before the robbery. Like seemingly everyone else in this town, Andy is hiding a secret, a young homosexual lover.
The movie’s title refers to the place Andy wants to meet Steph at, after he has procured the money, but there will likely be twists and turns aplenty in this dark comedy. The cast also includes Adam Pally, Ron Livingston and Rob Corddry. Shimmer Lake marks the directorial debut of writer Oren Uziel, who wrote the hit short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth that helped spawn the Mortal Kombat: Legacy web series. He went on to write the script for the hit comedy sequel 22 Jump Street, starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, along with Freaks of Nature and the upcoming Cloverfield Movie, which was once entitled God Particle.
When Shimmer Lake debuts on the Netflix streaming service in a few weeks, it will mark the end of a long road for this film, which started back in 2009. This original screenplay by Oren Uziel landed on the 2009 Black List, a year which included scripts such as The Social Network, Prisoners, The Voices and eventual Best Picture winner The King’s Speech, just to name a few. Take a look at the first trailer for Shimmer Lake below.