An official trailer for Juice WRLD: Into The Abyss – a new documentary covering the life and career of the late emo-rap stalwart (real name Jarad Higgins) – has been shared ahead of the film’s release later this month.
Set to stream on HBO Max come Thursday December 16, Juice WRLD: Into The Abyss marks the sixth and final instalment of HBO’s Music Box anthology. It follows earlier films focussed on Alanis Morissette, DMX and Kenny G, as well as revered industry mogul Robert Stigwood and the ill-fated Woodstock 99 festival.
The new trailer for Juice WRLD: Into The Abyss was released on Thursday (December 2), coinciding with what would have been the rapper’s 23rd birthday. Take a look at it below:
“When you’re a fan of this shit, you look at it from a certain perspective,” Higgins says in a key snippet, “but when you’re in it, you see it for what it really is. I’m still happy I could change the world, but… It’s not what it looks like.”
The film will also touch on Higgins’ struggles with mental illness, and how during his short time in the spotlight, he became “a therapist for millions of kids” and “a voice of that generation”.
Another section of the trailer draws from an interview in which Higgins said: “If you’ve got anxiety [or] depression, they all look at you like you’re crazy; that’s not how it should be [but] that’s how it is, and that needs to change. And hopefully I’m one of those people that could bring that change.”
Juice WRLD: Into The Abyss was directed by Tommy Oliver, whose previous works include the 2013 drama 1982, and last year’s HBO documentary 40 Years A Prisoner. Per HBO, the latter “chronicles one of the most controversial shootouts in American history, the 1978 Philadelphia police raid on the radical back-to-nature group MOVE, and the aftermath that led to a son’s decades-long fight to free his parents”.
Preceding the release of Juice WRLD: Into The Abyss will be Higgins’ second posthumous album (and fourth overall), ‘Fighting Demons’. It’s set to land on December 10 via Grade A / Interscope. Two singles have been shared from it thus far: ‘Already Dead’ and ‘Wandered To LA’, the latter a joint effort with Justin Bieber.
Thursday also saw Higgins’ mother, Carmela Wallace, share a touching letter in his memory. “Although it has been nearly two years since you’ve been gone,” she wrote (via Complex), “I still think about you every day and losing you has changed my life forever. I’m glad that we always made sure that we said goodbye when we left each other because we didn’t know when we would see each other again.”
The first posthumous record from Juice WRLD – who passed away in December 2019 – came in the form of last year’s ‘Legends Never Die’. In a review of the project, NME wrote: “[The album] is a sprawling 21-track project that pays necessary homage to the talented rapper, but is too bloated and featured-packed to say much about him.”