Trust Review: Trust makes Sophie Turner play a woman whose private life has been ripped apart for public consumption.
Lauren Lane is a former child star who has turned into a television actor liked by many. She has a kind of carefully maintained Hollywood image that looks effortless until one ugly scandal blows it all apart. After a hacker leaks her private information, Lauren retreats to an isolated area hoping that disappearing for a while might mean getting her life back.
Except the very fact that this is a thriller means the isolation is not safe. The movie Trust has a genuinely juicy idea of what happens when a woman who has already lost control of her public image suddenly loses control of her physical safety too, buried under all the chaos, but the movie unfortunately does not do justice to that idea.
Trust Review: Sophie Turner Is The Reason To Stay
Sophie Turner is easily the most compelling thing about Trust. Lauren could have become another “woman in an isolated area” thriller protagonist, but Turner gives her enough vulnerability and exhaustion to make the character feel like a person rather than a plot device.
There is a particular kind of sadness attached to watching Lauren try to disappear while knowing that even her disappearance is something other people can exploit.
The film understands that celebrity comes with a strange kind of ownership and everyone feels entitled to them; to Lauren. Turner handles the physical side of the role well once the film shifts properly into survival mode. The fear feels much more convincing when Lauren is forced to rely on herself rather than wait around for someone else to save her.
The Airbnb Could Have Been Scarier
The remote Airbnb is exactly the sort of thriller setting that should make you want to check every locked door in your own house afterwards. There is isolation, nowhere to run, and there are strangers who should not be there. There is also a constant anxiety of knowing that Lauren’s supposed refuge has already been compromised.
The problem is that Trust keeps wandering away from its strongest idea; it does not fully commit to Lauren’s problems, and that indecision is felt.
Just when the movie begins building genuine tension, it introduces another storyline, and just when Lauren’s line becomes interesting, the movie cuts away. The thriller keeps opening the doors when it should be locking us inside one room with Lauren and letting the paranoia breathe.
Where Trust Loses Me
The biggest problem of the movie is not that it is slow. It is that the movie Trust sometimes feels like it has several different movies fighting for attention, and thus there are diversions.
There is a celebrity scandal; invasion of privacy; criminals breaking into Airbnb; Lauren’s relationship with the man she trusted; a survival element, and even the dog becomes a part of the messy situation.
When all of these come together, jumping focus every ten minutes, the movie itself feels unfocused. The result is a film that occasionally gets its hands around something genuinely uncomfortable before dropping it to chase the next twist.
But The Premise Still Works
What saves the movie Trust from being completely forgettable is the central anxiety that feels uncomfortably contemporary.
Lauren is not simply running from criminals; she is running from a world that already invaded her privacy before she ever reached the Airbnb, which makes the title more interesting than it initially seems.
Trust becomes the real horror in the film: who gets to know you; who gets access to you; who believes they are entitled to having everything about you; and what happens when the person you trusted the most becomes the person you need to fear.
The movie does not explore these questions as deeply as it could have, but they sit right behind the entire survival-thriller machinery.
Final Verdict
If you are watching Trust for Sophie Turner in survival mode, you should watch it, but if you are expecting a tightly constructed psychological thriller that escalates until the final minute, Trust might just test your patience.
The film is only about an hour and a half long, so it does not overstay, and when it focuses on Lauren, the movie has flashes of the tense, intimate thriller it could have been.
The movie Trust ultimately feels like a thriller that keeps finding interesting doors and then refusing to walk us through them. Sophie Turner is undoubtedly committed; the premise is deliciously uncomfortable and even has potential, but the screenplay keeps getting in the way.
The movie Trust would make you go “no, do not trust them,” and the thought would sit with you.
Watch Trust on Netflix.
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