The blessed day has arrived: this morning, Hulu and A24 welcomed the first trailer for False Positive, Ilana Glazer’s upcoming horror satire, to the world! And, yeah, it’s giving us 21st century Rosemary’s Baby vibes.
Co-written by Glazer and director John Lee, the film follows expectant parents Lucy (Glazer) and Adrian (Justin Theroux) on their journey to parenthood. But this “birth story” gets pretty twisted, as Lucy begins to suspect her renowned fertility specialist Dr. Hindle (an unctuously charming Pierce Brosnan) of something sinister.
The teaser starts off upbeat enough, with a montage of the hopeful couple anticipating their little bundle of joy to the reassuringly retro tune of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” But once Dr. Hindle pronounces the reproductively challenged Lucy 100-percent knocked up, things start to get eerie. She begins seeing creepy visions and becomes convinced that Hindle and co. along with Adrian — is that Theroux making out with another dude??? —are all conspiring against her.
“I wanna see someone more…natural,” she says. So, she seeks out the help of a soulful black midwife played by Zainab Jah, naturally, despite Hindle’s warnings against all the voodoo out there in the world of prenatal care. All of which looks like it’s leading to a knockdown, drag out fight with Gretchen Mol’s fembot Stepford nurse.
Obviously, Glazer and Lee are riffing pretty explicitly on Rosemary’s Baby here — the pregnancy, the paranoia. Even Adrian’s name is a nod to the devil spawn in Ira Levin’s 1968 novel. But it’ll be interesting to see what the enthusiastically feminist-minded Glazer does with a story about the anxieties of pregnancy in an era when women’s reproductive rights are in serious jeopardy — and how the Broad City star adjusts her wide-eyed, daffy persona to this darker material.
We’ll see when False Positive premieres June 25 on Hulu.
