Troian Bellisario’s ‘Feed’ Gets A Chilling First Trailer

Troian Bellisario feeds a personal monster in her directorial debut Feed. The forthcoming film, written by Bellisario as well, follows Olivia Grey and her twin brother Matthew (Harry Potter's Tom Felton). They have a special connection, and much of the first trailer does well to highlight their adolescent dreams of doing everything together. That is, until tragedy strikes and Matthew dies, leaving Olivia on her own to navigate the trials, tribulations, perils, highs, and lows of life with Matthew's presence haunting her.

It sounds like an emotional thriller on paper—and it definitely looks like that!—but Feed actually is an exploration of Bellisario's prior struggles. "There was this emptiness in me that I wanted to, not fill, but engage," she tells her sometimes Pretty Little Liars director Lesli Linka Glatter in Interview. "I felt like there was a story in me that hadn't been told, and it was a very personal story and it came from a point in my life when I felt like I had experienced something and, still to this day, I couldn't get anyone—even the people who loved me the most, even my boyfriend or my mother or my father—to understand what that experience was truly like for me." She goes on to explain that the experience was an eating disorder and "control on a very, very literal level." The result is Feed, which forced Bellisario to confront her past directly and acknowledge the lifelong battle ahead with it. 

"It's amazing that you can have this huge, life-threatening thing be a part of you and still live inside of you, and almost tame it in a weird way," she says. 

Feed will be available on VOD and all digital platforms July 18.