There’s a certain kind of movie trailer that sells you on a premise, and then there’s the kind that sells you on a world—a secret handshake of glances, rules, rituals, and the quiet thrill of surrender. “Pillion” is very much the latter, and with A24 finally rolling out the first proper look at Harry Lighton’s feature debut, the film’s particular cocktail of kink, comedy, and unexpectedly bruised tenderness is coming into focus.
Harry Melling (“The Pale Blue Eye,” “The Queen’s Gambit”) plays Colin, a timid, buttoned-up guy whose life is essentially a polite waiting room—until he’s singled out by Ray, an impossibly handsome biker dom played by Alexander Skarsgård. The official logline keeps it simple (and smart): a timid man gets swept off his feet when an enigmatic biker takes him on as his submissive. That’s the movie’s engine: desire as relocation to another world and intimacy as reeducation to how these worlds work.
And, look, it’s not pretending this is “Fifty Shades Of Grey” with different lighting. When The Playlist reviewed the film out of Cannes, he said the film framed the experience as deliberately confrontational in a way that’s weirdly invigorating: “And it may make even the most liberal viewer uncomfortable in the best way possible.” That’s the sweet spot the trailer is trying to bottle—something that can be graphic and funny and disarming, but never wink-wink ironic about the people inside it.
Lighton’s own tonal target was making the film much sweeter than many assumed it might be. “There’s a knee-jerk reaction when you hear about BDSM—that it’s going to be either very ironic or it’s going to be very severe—and I knew that I didn’t want to lose the fun of it,” He told Vanity Fair late last year. “But I also didn’t want to create a distance between the audience and Colin and Ray through irony. That’s probably where the sweetness comes through. The film is meant to be funny, and I want people to laugh. But it’s not meant to be funny in a way that detaches you from the people in front of the camera.”
“Pillion” premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, and the film’s awards-season footprint began basically immediately (including Un Certain Regard’s Best Screenplay). The cast also extends beyond the central dom/sub duet: Douglas Hodge and Lesley Sharp play Colin’s parents, and Jake Shears appears as Kevin, another figure inside Ray’s biker orbit.
Release-wise, the movie already had its U.K. theatrical run (November 28, 2025), and it hits U.S. theaters on February 6, 2026. Watch the new trailer below.
