Flo­rence Pugh and Har­ry Styles play house in the Don’t Wor­ry Dar­ling trailer

A mul­ti­tude of buzzes have made Don’t Wor­ry Dar­ling, the lat­est direc­to­r­i­al effort from actress Olivia Wilde, into an object of much pub­lic inter­est: the behind-the-scenes dra­ma involv­ing Wilde and star Har­ry Styles, now a cou­ple; her recent appear­ance at Cin­ema­Con dur­ing which she was served with cus­tody papers from ex Jason Sudeikis; the rumors that Styles absolute­ly goes to town on costar Flo­rence Pugh in an unshy scene for the upcom­ing film.

The first trail­er, released online ear­li­er today, con­firms that last one in its quick-cut shots of Pugh’s Step­ford house­wife get­ting rav­ished atop a din­ner table. And yet the clip below leaves more shroud­ed by mys­tery than it reveals, set­ting up an idyl­lic ​’50s sub­ur­bia in which the only thing known for sure is that it’s all built on a lie.

Pugh stars as a young home­mak­er who seems to have it all, from the per­fect hus­band (Styles) to a sparkling planned-com­mu­ni­ty home to a group of gal­pals for bal­let class­es and cock­tail par­ties (Wilde, pulling dou­ble duty, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s secret weapon Kate Berlant). But some­thing about her house­bound day-to-day doesn’t feel right, and it seems like a dark secret may be beck­on­ing to her from across the sprawl­ing desert that sur­rounds their lit­tle post­war oasis.

The trail­er hints at a sin­is­ter under­cur­rent, between the inscrutable mur­murs about ​“Project Vic­to­ry,” the glow­er­ing men­ace of the com­pa­ny town’s boss (Chris Pine), and a spooky egg­less shell. It’s also a hand­some show­case for the cin­e­matog­ra­phy of Matthew Liba­tique (a favorite of Dar­ren Aronof­sky and Spike Lee), which appears to dip into mono­chrome sur­re­al­ism right out of a Bus­by Berke­ley fan­ta­sy, com­plete with syn­chro­nized dancers.

What’s hap­pen­ing under­neath the placid sur­face of the town is anyone’s guess, at this junc­ture lit­er­al­ly. The trail­er invites spec­u­la­tion on the true nature of its plot, the Occam’s razor guess being that this is all some The Vil­lage-style ruse of iso­la­tion, and that the men of the town go off to enjoy the lux­u­ries of the mod­ern world before return­ing to a bub­ble frozen in a time when they ruled supreme. Your thoughts?

Don’t Wor­ry Dar­ling comes to the cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 23 September.