Scott Cooper’s career has been an odd one. Dude found himself squeezed out of his gritty country-western niche by the likes of Taylor Sheridan mid-career, so he pivoted to horror with Antlers and is continuing down on that path with The Pale Blue Eye, a film about a grizzled detective teaming up with a young Edgar Allan Poe to solve a murder at West Point. It stars Christian Bale — who, in these desaturated images, looks like a Pale Blue Guy — and will hopefully be better than both Antlers and Hostiles. But who knows? We don’t, and as compelling as this idea is, there are plenty of ways that it could go wrong. Either way, you can get those hot takes ready by watching this teaser that Netflix dropped on Thursday.
Take a look:
Here’s a synopsis, which is nice and long because it’s a Netflix prestige picture and doesn’t have Ryan Reynolds in it:
“West Point, 1830. In the early hours of a gray winter morning, a cadet is found dead. But after the body arrives at the morgue, tragedy becomes savagery when it’s discovered that the young man’s heart has been skillfully removed. Fearing irreparable damage to the fledgling military academy, its leaders turn to a local detective, Augustus Landor (Christian Bale), to solve the murder. Stymied by the cadets’ code of silence, Landor enlists the help of one of their own to pursue the case, an eccentric cadet with a disdain for the rigors of the military and a penchant for poetry—a young man named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).”
The Pale Blue Eye will hit theaters on December 23 before rolling out to all Netflix subscribers on January 6. Better brush up on that Poe because you’re never gonna know when you might have to pull out a Masque of the Red Death quote on your boys after the screening.