Vertical Entertainment and Roadside Attractions released today a trailer for Emily the Criminal. The crime thriller stars Aubrey Plaza (Parks & Recreation) as a woman who, neck-deep in debt, decides to take a stroll in the world of credit card scams. The movie had an early premiere at this year's Sundance Film Festival and Plaza's performance was praised as a career-best.
As many film critics have pointed out, you need only see a morally ambiguous character in a vulnerable situation, and chances are you’ll root for them for the remainder of the story. If you watch the first few seconds of Emily the Criminal’s trailer, you’ll at least be able to empathize with the title character's situation: She was already in a dire financial situation, but it all spirals out of control when she is told how deep into debt she got due to interest rates.
Then it’s all-or-nothing time as Emily takes on some harmless jobs that start out as using fake credit cards, but as the trailer suggests, things quickly escalate as she gets deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld. What’s surprising about the trailer, however, is that Emily doesn’t seem to be too fazed with her own situation. It looks like, the deeper she gets into that dangerous world, the more daring she becomes, which is probably a pragmatic modus operandi if you want to survive in that environment.
The trailer for Emily The Criminal also showcases Plaza’s range as an actress, who ventures in the opposite direction of the comedy roots she became known for. This time, she seems raw and even dangerous. The movie stood out among the titles of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and at the time, Collider’s own Ross Bonaime praised Plaza’s performance as “remarkable,” and added that “this is a whole new side to her that we've never seen before, and might arguably be her best performance so far.”
In addition to Plaza, the film stars Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwok, Gina Gershon, Jonathan Avigdori, and Bernardo Badillo. Emily The Criminal is written and directed by John Patton Ford, who makes his feature film debut with what seems to be a tightly crafted thriller story. In an interview with Collider during Sundance, the freshman director revealed that the story is deeply personal to him when it comes to the title character’s state of mind:
“In terms of the fear informing the writing process, I’m a big believer in every movie you make is kind of a thesis about whatever your life is at that moment. I think those typically create the best movies. At the time I was writing this, there was just a lot of uncertainty and insecurity in my life. I was trying to get a career going and it was tough and things were expensive and I didn’t have any money, and I think one of the big fears is that the more time I put into this career was time that I was losing potentially doing something else. I was constantly going, ‘Do I want to put another six months into trying to get this movie made? Because that’s six months I could be studying for the LSAT and doing something that would pay off in a much more predictable fashion.’ And I was scared that I’d end up a middle-aged person suddenly looking back going, ‘What was all that time spent for?’”
Emily The Criminal premieres in theaters on August 12. Watch the trailer below: