First Trailer For Everything, Everything Film Adaptation Puts New Spin On Old Romantic Quandaries

The premise of a girl who falls in love with a boy but can’t be with him because she’s allergic to the outside world is a smart one, because it sets up various dramatic quandaries that are simultaneously old and new; the new trailer for Everything, Everything, based on Nicola Yoon’s young adult novel of the same name, suggests as much. On the one hand, the de facto house arrest experienced by the immunologically deficient Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg, aka Rue from The Hunger Games), who is forced to communicate to her guy (Nick Robinson) through texting and forlornly locking eyes with him through her bedroom window, is a rather one-of-a-kind situation, but on the other hand, this setup is simply a spin on Romeo and Juliet, where romantic love is hindered by circumstances beyond the lovers’ control. Although few cinematic heroines wrestle with the decision of whether to spend a long, physically healthy existence trapped indoors or to venture boldly outdoors at the risk of a lethal histamine response, the question of whether banal longevity or exuberant brevity makes for a better life is one that has resurfaced on the screen over and over again through the years.

Hopefully, the film, whose trailer simultaneously tugs at the heartstrings with its unabashed melodrama—made all the more powerful by the sound of the Beyoncé-sung segment of Naughty Boy’s “Runnin’ (Lose it All)”—and breeds wariness of a mere retread of the emotional territory oft traversed by YA novels and their film adaptations, will lean more heavily on the new while injecting doses of old-fashioned, heart-swelling romance where needed.

Check out the full trailer above, and see the film in theaters when it premieres on May 19.