Justin Timberlake’s Shellshocked Boyfriend at Center of Benicio del Toro’s Murder Investigation in Tense ‘Reptile’ Trailer
Written by djfrosty on August 22, 2023
Something doesn’t quite add up in the first trailer for the upcoming Netflix murder thriller Reptile, in which detective Tom Nichols (Benicio del Toro) tries to figure out who killed a young real estate agent. With a handful of equally shady suspects, the nearly three-minute preview opens with a weary looking Nichols saying the case he’s working on is “a real nightmare.”
After a montage of pictures from the crime scene, we see Nichols entering a room to speak to one of the four main suspects, Will (Justin Timberlake), who was the agent’s boyfriend at the time of her death. Looking shell-shocked and haunted, Will just stares blankly when Nichols asks him what happened.
“I walked in the front door, I called out for her… no answer,” Will says flatly. “And then what?” Nichols asks.
Cut to the medical examiner asking Nichols if he can show him something strange, which appears to be a bite mark on the victim’s hand, a wound Nichols tries to recreate by biting his wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) on the hand as she helps him try to solve the case. The movie’s tagline hints at the twisty plot, promising, “A mysterious murder. A hardened detective. A truth more dangerous than they could have ever imagined.”
Later in the trailer — set to a haunting version of Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” — when Nichols asks Will who else he thinks may have been involved, he remembers that a shadowy man showed up at his house a few nights earlier “acting strange,” which leads the other investigators (Eric Bogosian and Ato Essandoh) to narrow down the suspects to four potentials: the boyfriend (Timberlake), a friend, the “weirdo” (Michael Carmen Pitt) and the woman’s ex-husband (Karl Glusman); Sky Ferreira, Frances Fisher and Matilda Lutz also star in the film, the first directorial effort from music video director Grant Singer (The Weekend, Troye Sivan).
Reptile, which will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month, will hit select theaters on Sept. 29 and Netflix on Oct. 6.
Check out the trailer for Reptile below.