The Wave trailer puts Justin Long in one very trippy dream sequence. The sci-fi thriller, which has also been billed as horror, premiered back in September at Fantastic Fest. “Have you ever woken up from a dream so real that for a moment you can’t remember where you are?” Justin Long asks at the start of trailer. “This is a lot like that.” And from there, we’re off to some mind melting visuals paired with some thrills where Long’s character can’t seem to separate reality from a dream.
The Wave focuses on Frank (Justin Long), a bored corporate lawyer, who decides to shake it up with a wild night out. In the process, he takes a mysterious drug that launches him into a mind-bending time travel adventure. The movie has been compared to Looper, Groundhog’s Day, and Dude, Where’s My Car? Those are three pretty random movies, but the trailer seems to tease a bit of this, while mostly featuring some mind-altering visuals. According to the official synopsis, the movie contains “whip-smart dialogue, comically over-the-top characters, and enough time travel twists to keep the biggest sci-fi fan on the edge of their seats.”
Gille Klabin directed The Wave, which was written by Carl W. Lucas. The movie marks the first time that Klabin has directed a feature-length. “This film was a tiny passion project Carl and I had dreamed of making over a series of weekends,” says the director. “It snowballed into a much bigger production than we ever dreamed possible but was always our little psychedelic baby.” It certainly looks to be very psychedelic in every sense.
In addition to Justin Long, The Wave also stars Donald Faison, Tommy Flanagan, Bill Sage, Katia Winter, Sheila Vand, and Ronnie Gene Blevins. So far, reactions to the movie have been generally positive, with some giving it glowing reviews. There are others who claim that it has a slow start and doesn’t really pick up until the third act. With that being said, nearly all of the reviews praise The Wave‘s visuals with descriptions of “hallucinogenic camerawork and the most surreal use of rotoscope animation in modern cinematic memory.”
While The Wave premiered in September, there is no release date as of this writing. It’s been a while since the premiere, so we should get an update as to if and when the movie is hitting theaters, or at the very least landing on VOD and streaming formats. Regardless, the movie looks like a pretty fun trip and something that fans of sci-fi thrillers will be able to get into, at the very least for the visuals that Gille Klabin was able to conjure up. While we wait for some more news about The Wave to drop, you can check out the trailer below, thanks to the Film Trailer Zone YouTube channel.
