I’m Thinking of Ending Things Will Make You Rethink Visiting Your Partner’s Parents

In typical Charlie Kaufman fashion, the trailer for his latest film—I’m Thinking of Ending Things—is not exactly straightforward.

His films, which incorporate what the director has called “dreamlike logic,” can be confusing to understand in linear fashion, but that is what makes them all the more unique in a landscape that is overrun with too many mediocre blockbusters to count. In this one, it seems that Jessie Buckley plays a young woman who decides to visit her boyfriend’s (Jesse Plemons) parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) for the first time, just as she has also decided she has been considering ending their relationship.

The influence of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind can be felt here, too—this is a breakup dramedy draped in some interpretation of quantum physics and how it affects our perception of time. So you can expect some elements of this story to be told out of chronological order.

Kaufman also collaborated with Łukasz Żal, who received Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography for Cold War and Ida, to give the surreal picture some intense saturation.

Meeting the parents has never seemed so stressful, as Collette channels some Hereditary and The United States of Tara energy in the film, and the story is based on a horror novel of the same name by Iain Reid.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things will be available to stream on Netflix on September 4—just in time for you to decide if you want to take that Labor Day weekend trip to meet your significant other’s parents, after all.

Related: Being Charlie Kaufman