Netflix's huge new thriller has Jessica Chastain as a country star turned sleuth
Heartland looks like a real ride
Netflix has a long history, at this point, of revealing fairly massive projects just before they hit the streaming service. After all, that's sort of its entire plan – keep people guessing about what it has coming, but in a way that incentivises them to leave their subscriptions recurring, assuming that there will indeed be a constant drip-feed of decent stuff.
Well, decent stuff is probably underselling its latest reveal – a country music-themed mystery thriller that stars an Oscar-winner and looks like it could have some extremely entertaining twists and turns. Heartland sees Jessica Chastain playing Misty Jones, a semi-retired country superstar who heads back to her home town of Nashville when her niece (also a musician) goes missing.
Misty seems like a certified badass, and suspects from the start that something's not right – her niece is famous, and famous people don't just disappear without anyone having a solitary clue where they've gone. She's clearly going to take it into her own hands to progress the case where the police seem largely stumped.
From the trailer Netflix dropped this week, it looks like it won't take her long to find some fairly harrowing stuff, and that's just the half of it. It's clear that Misty will also get embroiled back into the world of the Nashville music scene, and there are going to be some concert appearances for the movie to portray, too. In fact, Netflix says the soundtrack will be available before the film arrives, so it's clearly proud of it.
We'll get a better sense of whether that pride is in the right place when the film arrives – it premieres on Netflix on 13 November. Interestingly, there's no word of it getting a theatrical release, which tends to indicate that Netflix is keen for a movie to be in contention for awards in a few months' time. Whether that says anything about the likely quality of Heartland is up to you.
I suspect it just means that this is a gripping thriller that should keep you engaged, rather than something deeper and more artistic – and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Expect this one to rocket up Netflix's charts when it comes out.
