Is Nine Days enough to decide if you can exist? That’s the supposition Winston Duke’s Will is operating on in the Sony Pictures Classics film’s first full trailer, which finds him welcoming unborn souls, or, rather, potential unborn souls, to his lonely little house in the middle of existential nowhere. If you were thinking the movie by director Edson Oda, which premiered at Sundance this year, had the feel of Defending Your Life sans the romantic-comedy elements, you’re only half right. According to the movie’s IMDb description, Will finds himself shaken by the arrival of Zazie Beetz’s Emma, “a candidate who is not like the others, forcing him to turn within and reckon with his own tumultuous past.â€
Yes, Will says he is merely a “cog in a machine†rather than the man in charge, and yes, it seems unlikely they’ll end up together, but we’re getting strong “rom-com starring God†vibes from the trailer, and we do not hate it. Not at all. With Bill Skarsgard, Benedict Wong, Tony Hale, David Rysdahl, Arianna Ortiz, Perry Smith, and Geraldine Hughes rounding out the cast, Nine Days is, at least on this specific day, scheduled to debut in theaters January 22.