Joel Schumacher’s typically shiny, Schumacher-y new thriller Trespass got some early, unwanted publicity last year when star Nicolas Cage suddenly disappeared shortly before production, with Cage making the rare move to not accept money to appear on screen. At the time, it was reported that Cage had reservations about his role, which found he and Nicole Kidman playing a wealthy married couple taken hostage by violent masked thieves, and that he’d decided at the last minute that he’d rather be one of the criminals. Everything worked out eventually, but as this first trailer suggests, probably not without some allowances: We’d bet even money that it was Cage’s idea to give his character those creepy, amber-tinted shades, and make him such a bundle of raw nerves that he can’t even tell Kidman how beautiful she looks without it coming off like an involuntary tic.
Still, despite Cage’s heroic efforts to elevate standard pulp material with every fascinatingly bizarre twist of his mouth, this home invasion thriller looks pretty familiar—so much so that it’s (probably quite rightly) been called Joel Schumacher’s Funny Games, minus all of the meta commentary on violence in the media. (Or maybe it’s just a remake of 1992’s Trespass, minus all the rappers?) Either way, one thing is clear: Nothing will come between Nicolas Cage and his money.