Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard star in Cinedigm’s ‘Night Moves’ (2014)

The first trailer has been released for Cinedigm’s Night Moves. The forecast for this film spells lots of tension and the onset of paranoia in what appears to be a nail-biting suspense thriller starring a trio of actors who you might never have imagined appearing together in the same film.

Dakota Fanning, Jesse Eisenberg and Peter Sarsgaard play three environmentalists planning to blow up a dam. What’s not clear yet from this first preview is what the exact reason is for their decision to to do so. What is clear from the trailer is that they’re concerned the Earth’s oceans will be gone by 2048, as Dakota Fanning’s character clearly states in the trailer. Perhaps blowing up the dam is a pre-emptive strike at the rest of the world for ridding the planet of all its water? Perhaps the reason for their scheme is secondary to the experience they all share hatching it. The trailer strongly suggests that these three characters get more and more paranoid about the legal and moral ramifications of what they’re planning to do. Mistrust sets in along with paranoia and, as we learn from Dakota Fanning’s voice-over, somebody gets hurt.

This first glimpse of Night Moves boasts some beautiful photography that lends a eerily somber backdrop to the undeniable tension coming from the three leads, none of whom are strangers to suspense. Jesse Eisenberg, known for his brilliant turn as the socially awkward Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher’s The Social Network, anchored the recent thriller The Double and appears to carrying that form forward. Peter Sarsgaard is well-versed in suspense and some of his finest work has been playing morally compromised and sinister characters, such as Carson in the 2005 suspense thriller Flightplan and most recently as the abusive and conniving Chuck in last year’s Lovelace. Still trying to shed her child-like image is Dakota Fanning. Her role in The Twilight Saga as an immortal child-like vampire certainly didn’t help much. But she is also familiar with suspense. Her most recent appearance in a thriller was 2012’s The Motel Life, but we mustn’t forget her star-turning appearance in Steven Spielberg’s TV Mini-series Taken (2002) and his blockbuster War of the Worlds (2005). Strange as it may seem to have these three actors together in one movie, they could perhaps lend their director Kelly Reichardt the star power she needs to bring her vision to a wider audience.

Reichardt, known for her award-winning films Wendy and Lucy and Meek’s Cutoff starring Michelle Williams, is a rising star behind the camera who often co-writes her films along with her long-time collaborator Jonathan Raymond. As is apparent from her previous films mentioned above, Reichardt is familiar with leading her characters through dire situations. One can only hope the cleverly edited preview of suspense and increasing paranoia is true to its ominous title and the end result. Hopefully, we’ll get a better glimpse soon of what to expect from this intriguing new film.

Night Moves opens wide in theaters May 30th.