At the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where Elizabeth Olsen first made a name for herself in Martha Marcy May Marlene and future Oscar nominee Margin Call debuted, another film took the entire festival by storm, and then fell off the map entirely. That was part of the plan, of course-- the mysterious cult drama Sound of My Voice was acquired by Fox Searchlight not long after the festival, and they began planning a release for spring of this year. They had acquired another drama starring Brit Marling, Another Earth, and after releasing that film over the summer, they were able to focus on bringing Marling's other film to theaters.
Now, the time has finally come for Sound of My Voice. Marling stars as the mysterious leader of a Southern California cult that's infiltrated by two reporters (Christopher Denham and Nicole Vicius) who become more entangled in the cult than they expected. Marling also co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij, and the two have already moved on to make another film together, the thriller The East. But before we talk about that, take a look at the first trailer for Sound of My Voice, which you can watch embedded below or in HD at Apple.com.
I'm a little surprised at how much of the plot this trailer lays out-- Sound of my Voice is all about the steadily encroaching mystery, the sense that you're losing track of what might be true and what might not, but the trailer seems so concerned with promising you a good mystery that it reveals so many of those twists right away. Then again, I might just have the perspective of someone who saw the film at a festival, knowing nothing, and assume that everybody ought to see it the same way. That's not realistic, of course, and you need trailers like this to get you interested in a small movie with no stars. But wouldn't it be more fun not to see any of this coming?
Sound of My Voice comes to theaters on April 27, and whether or not this trailer spoils too much, it's worth seeing in theaters to find out for yourself. Marling and Batmanglij are both rising talents, so see their first movie together and know that you were in on the ground floor.
