Frank Langella’s Family Tries to Talk Him Out of Being Euthanized in New Trailer for Youth in Oregon

In many ways, the latest trailer for Joel David Moore’s Youth in Oregon belongs to an all-too-familiar strain of the Indie Movie Trailer. The balanced mixing of happy and sad, the folksy soundtrack that builds to a chorus of anthemic trumpets, the appearance of wreath-like festival insignia suggesting acclaim as lavished by a community of filmgoers residing outside corporate Hollywood—all of it feels a tad twee, except, like so many of these kinds of trailers before it, this one works in spite of its patently generic qualities because it favors modest human struggles over weightless CGI, apocalyptic stakes, or other forms of razzle-dazzle that feel out of touch with our lived experiences.

Rather than having the whole world be on the brink of annihilation, Youth in Oregon focuses on the life of one person and the prospect of its ending. Raymond, played by Frank Langella in what David Ehrlich of IndieWire deemed “one of the great performances of a career that will continue to resonate for long after it’s over,” is an 80-year-old man who decides that he wants to head to Oregon to be euthanized rather than continue living an unfulfilling life. His daughter (Christina Applegate) won’t have any of that, however, so she assigns her husband (Billy Crudup) to be her dad’s chauffeur so that the husband can talk his father-in-law out of dying.

Check out the full trailer above. You can catch the film when it premiers in theaters and on-demand on Feb. 3