Universal Pictures is releasing a movie version of German author Daniel Kehlmann’s 2017 horror novel, You Should Have Left, and viewers won’t need to leave their homes to see it.
The first trailer for the film, which stars Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried, was released today, and will be available through video on-demand beginning June 19. It’s the latest example of how movie studios have altered their release strategies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed movie theaters across the country.
In the Kirkus-starred novel (translated from the German by Ross Benjamin), an author moves his wife and young daughter to a secluded place in the mountains, so that he can work on his latest book. His marriage is in trouble, he’s having weird dreams, and it soon appears that there’s something very wrong with their rental house. It’s a setup that brings to mind Stephen King’s 1976 horror classic, The Shining, and Kirkus’ reviewer noted that the novel is “in many ways, a classic haunted-house tale.” Kehlmann, the reviewer wrote, “uses all these familiar tropes beautifully. But he also creates a sense of existential dread that transcends the typical ghost story.”
The film is written and directed by veteran filmmaker David Koepp, perhaps best known for co-writing the screenplay for 1993 blockbuster dinosaur-thriller, Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 bestseller. Koepp’s Kirkus-starred debut novel, Cold Storage, about a killer fungus that threatens to wipe out humanity, was published last year.
You Should Have Left’s producer, Jason Blum, was nominated for Oscars for the films Whiplash (2014), Get Out (2016), and BlacKkKlansman (2018). He also produced the critically acclaimed horror movie The Invisible Man, which was loosely inspired by H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel; it was released as a video-on-demand title just a month after its February theatrical release this year, due to pandemic-related theater closures.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
