The (Literal) Horrors of Modern Dating from Dual POVs Propel Suspenseful ‘Cat Person’, In Theaters This October
But does he have cats?
That’s the unanswered question in the trailer for Cat Person, a new horror thriller from Rialto Pictures scheduled to open in theaters on October 6th. In the film, college sophomore Margot (Emilia Jones, who was nominated for an Academy Award for CODA), has a fling with an older man named Robert (Nicholas Braun, Succession) but soon gets suspicious about him.
When she realizes the self-described ‘cat person’ doesn’t seem to have any cats at his place (and that he’s a terrible kisser), she breaks off the nascent relationship, eventually leading to Robert stalking and tormenting Margot, who is determined not to be a statistic, concluding, “One of us has to die.”
Rather than a ‘woman in peril’ film, though, Cat Person splits the narrative, offering both Robert and Margot’s POV. Director Susanna Fogel told Deadline in an interview earlier this year that she found the idea of jumping back and forth between the viewpoints of her protagonists was compelling because it allowed her to explore the “miscommunications and the cultural baggage that men and women bring into dating,” especially now in the post-#MeToo moment.
Fogel directs from a screenplay by Masters of Sex writer Michelle Ashford, and the cast also includes Geraldine Viswanathan (Blockers, Bad Education) as Margot’s BFF, along with Hope Davis, Michael Gandolfini, Liza Koshy, Fred Melamed, Isaac Powell, Isabella Rossellini and Donald Elise Watkins.
Cat Person is based on Kristen Roupenian’s 2017 short story of the same name, which was published in The New Yorker and subsequently went viral. Jeremy Steckler and Conde Nast Entertainment/The New Yorker Studios’ Helen Estabrook produced the film, with Fogel, Ashford and Daniel Hank aboard as executive producers. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January.