What starts as a favor quickly spirals into full-blown gang war chaos in Caught Stealing, Darren Aronofsky’s latest genre experiment set in the grimy, high-octane underbelly of 1990s New York. The first trailer dropped today, and it’s as tense, twisted, and unhinged as you’d expect from the director behind Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream.

Leading the charge is Golden Globe-winning actor and VMAN 49 cover star Austin Butler, starring as a bruised, reluctant antihero named Hank Thompson—a former baseball player turned Lower East Side bartender who finds himself accidentally swept up in New York City’s criminal landscape. His mistake? Agreeing to cat-sit for his punk-rock neighbor Russ (Matt Smith). The cat’s cute. The fallout? Not so much.

The trailer finds Hank and his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) playing pet-sitters at Russ’ apartment. But things take a violent turn when two intruders show up and unleash a brutal beatdown on Hank, throwing the couple into a world of trouble.

After that, it’s a fast-paced descent through an absurdly violent mog-fueled maze—Russian gangsters, shady bookies, Puerto Rican mobsters, and a lot of blood splatter. Rounding out the cast is a heavyweight roster: Regina King, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Griffin Dunne, Carol Kane (speaking Yiddish, no less), and Benito A. Martínez Ocasio AKA Bad Bunny as a wild card named Colorado.

Based on Charlie Huston’s cult 2004 novel, Caught Stealing marks a left turn for Aronofsky—trading existential dread for gonzo action and black comedy. But if this trailer’s any indication, it might be his most fun—and most feral—film yet.

Caught Stealing hits theaters August 29, 2025. Watch the trailer below.