It’s been six years since everyone read Cat Person, the Kristen Roupenian story published in The New Yorker about a woman’s crummy/creepy experience dating an older man, and now—even though it’s been so long that everyone has probably forgotten how they felt about the story—it’s finally time for the movie adaptation to resurrect the old Cat Person debates. Was the narrator to hard on the man? Was the man too pushy, to the point where it crossed a line into abuse? Are men just fucked-up in general? Did the story trivialize actual abusive behavior by conflating that with simply being an asshole?
The trailer for the Cat Person movie actually sidesteps a bit of that and jumps right to thriller territory, creating a more literal rendition of the bad vibes that were at the heart of the original story… while also occasionally becoming more like a full-on comedy? Really, how many trailers for what appear to be ostensibly feminist-leaning thrillers end on a freakin’ Wilhelm scream? Is it in there as a trap for women who see this trailer with a boyfriend, because the filmmakers know he’ll be unable to resist leaning over to her and mansplaining “that’s the Wilhelm scream,” and then they’ll start to pick up on the boyfriend’s own manipulative Cat Person-esque behavior? If so, that’s genius. Well played, director Susanna Fogel.
Cat Person stars Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun, and it will be in theaters on October 6. Also, while we’re here, here’s a reminder that the story behind Cat Person—that it was basically an exaggerated retelling of something that the writer heard second-hand about someone else—is more interesting than the story itself. And probably this movie as well!
