In 2001, director Todd Field burst onto the screen with In The Bedroom, an extremely assured and devastating debut, nominated for five academy awards (including best picture). That he has only made one other feature in the 16 years since is a tragic loss to the film community.

Set in a small town in Maine, Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Sarah (Sissy Spacek) live with their young son, Frank (then-21-year-old Nick Stahl), bursting into adulthood. In a very short time, Frank develops an intense relationship with an older single mother (Marisa Tomei) who has a troubled relationship with a possessive and psychotic ex-husband. Frank’s relationship creates rifts among his family, who have to deal with the fallout of that relationship.

Field pulls the rug out from his audience early and hard, exposing the building blocks of a nuclear family. What makes a marriage? What makes a family? Is its whole purpose to raise a family? For most families, protecting the children are the utmost concern. But, what if they can’t be protected? Spacek and Wilkinson (each nominated for an academy award) deliver complex and brutally real performances as a couple who knows each other so well and are trying their hardest to keep everything together despite the circumstances.

The full impact of In the Bedroom was emphasized by a sly marketing campaign with a gorgeously constructed trailer that’s a work of art unto itself. The trailer for In the Bedroom played with expectations for what good and bad trailers do, especially with first films in indie theaters. By playing with our assumptions, the trailers for In the Bedroom sets the audience in the exact same place the characters are at the beginning of the film, effectively planting us in the mindset of its characters perhaps moreso than going in blind.

In the Bedroom airs Saturday night/Sunday morning at 2:10am on MGMHD.