'The Wolf Hour' Trailer: Naomi Watts Refuses To Leave Her Apartment In The Wild New York Summer Of '77

The Wolf Hour played at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and even though I was at the fest, I didn't hear a single thing about it. Indeed, this movie wasn't on my radar at all – until now. The first trailer for the movie just dropped, and it looks fantastic. Set in New York City during the sweltering summer of 1977 – when a blackout plunged the Big Apple into darkness, and the Son of Sam was stalking the streets – The Wolf Hour has Naomi Watts as an agoraphobic novelist slowly coming unraveled as she hides out in her dingy apartment. Watch The Wolf Hour trailer below.

Part of my job involves watching a lot of trailers. After a while, you begin to notice patterns. Boring, rote patterns, as if all the trailer editors have gotten together and made a pact to cut everything to fit a certain style. It can get tiresome. But every now and then, a trailer will come along and knock me on my ass. The film the trailer is advertising might end up being a bust – but the trailer itself still has the power to wow.

Take this The Wolf Hour trailer, which kicks all kinds of ass. I haven't seen the movie in question, and I've heard next to nothing about it. But there's something special here. The footage cut together perfectly sets the mood of a hot, sweaty, dirty summer in New York City, 1977. Noami Watts looks suitably disheveled as a novelist coming unglued. And then there's the sound design – intercom buzzers, typewriter keys clacking, radio voices, and general city sounds. Under it all is a thumping, pumping, almost punk-rock beat. In short, this works, and I can't wait to see it. Here's the synopsis:

It's July 1977, and New York City is awash with escalating violence. A citywide blackout is triggering fires, looting, and countless arrests, and the Son of Sam murders are riddling the city with panic. June, once a celebrated counterculture figure, attempts to retreat from the chaos by shutting herself inside the yellowed walls of her grandmother's South Bronx apartment. But her doorbell is ringing incessantly, the heat is unbearable, and creeping paranoia and fear are taking hold. Visitors, some invited, some unsolicited, arrive one by one, and June must determine whom she can trust and whether she can find a path back to her former self.

Then there's this new domestic trailer, which reveals the movie arrives December 6.