The trailer for Christian Bale’s next thriller, “The Pale Blue Eye,” dropped Wednesday and it looks terrifyingly epic.
Set at West Point in 1830, the story of “The Pale Blue Eye” follows Bale’s portrayal of “Augustus Landor,” a detective sent to investigate the murder of one of the school’s cadets, according to the movie’s IMDB page. You wouldn’t necessarily get the plot from the trailer, which is a dark, churning, almost horror-like journey in just about two minutes.
Bale looks his always-dashing-but-deeply-moody self in his role, but it’s Harry Melling who really captures the screen in this fictional origin story of his character, Edgar Allan Poe. You might remember Melling as Dudley Dursley in the “Harry Potter” franchise. He’s certainly grown up and thinned out since his days as every child’s least favorite television step-sibling.
Though Melling’s character is a real icon from art history, “The Pale Blue Eye” is a work of fiction, inspired by a novel of the same name.
“Because my father taught English and there was lots of literature strewn about our house, Poe came into my world at a young age, and I was just fascinated with his works,” writer and director Scott Cooper told Tudum. “And my father, after I directed ‘Crazy Heart,’ he said, ‘There’s a novel that you should read; it’s ‘The Pale Blue Eye’ and it has Edgar Allan Poe as a character at the center of an investigation.'” (RELATED: Netflix Documentary Could Rewrite All Of Human History)
The concept within the story of “The Pale Blue Eye” is almost Tarantino-like, taking a portion of contemporary human history and cultivating a fictional element of true escapism for the viewer. I’m excited to see how this turns out and whether it’ll be a serious award contender.
Watch the trailer here: