White Noise, Netflix’s new movie directed by Noah Baumbach, is about a paranoid family whose life is thrown into disarray when a train carrying chemical waste crashes in their town, releasing the toxic fumes into the air. And given the chaos of 2022, it’s not surprising that this 80s period piece is resonating with folks. After all, apocalypse chic is all over the FW22 and SS23 runways. But what’s most appealing about it all — as you can see in its brand new trailer — is the promise of two iconique performances from the internet’s boyfriend Adam Driver and a crimp-haired Greta Gerwig.
The film is an adaptation of the 1985 novel by Don DeLillo of the same name The plot follows Jack a professor of Hitler studies (played by Adam), his current wife Babette (director of the unhinged Barbie movie Greta Gerwig), and his four children, both from their marriage and from Jack’s previous ones. After chemical waste is accidentally released into their town a black cloud forms across the land and all must evacuate. The movie becomes an exploration of the fear of death and the panic decisions one will make to escape it.
The movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September and currently has a healthy 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The New Statesman called it a “maximalist, funny, abrasive satire”. A critic for Pajiba said it was “funny and weird and exhausting and frustrating and bustling with more ideas and observations than nearly any other movie you might see this year”.
Alongside Adam and Greta, the movie also stars Raffey Cassidy (The Killing of a Sacred Deer), musician André 3000, Alessandro Nivola and Jodie Turner-Smith (both were in The Neon Demon), Golden Globe winner Don Cheadle, Lars Eidinger (Personal Shopper) and siblings Sam and May Nivola. Behind the scenes, Noah (famed for his movie Marriage Story), directed, produced and wrote the screenplay for White Noise. His previous collaborator David Heyman also produced the movie alongside Uri Singer.
The movie is set to hit cinemas on Friday 25 November before coming to Netflix on 30 December — that’s if a toxic airborne chemical doesn’t come for us all first.