Netflix horror film The Pale Blue Eye has unveiled a chilling first trailer. Directed by Scott Cooper (Antlers), the movie is adapted from Louis Bayard’s 2003 book which fictionalises the roots of Edgar Allan Poe – the writer of The Raven.
Method acting champion Christian Bale is the star appeal as Augustus Landor, while support comes in the form of Harry Melling (Harry Potter), Gillian Anderson (Sex Education), Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody), Hadley Robinson (I’m Thinking of Ending Things), Timothy Spall (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) and Robert Duvall (Apocalypse Now).
Christian Bale in Pale Blue Eye
“West Point, 1830. In the early hours of a grey 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 skilfully removed,” teases an official synopsis.
“Fearing irreparable damage to the fledgling military academy, its leaders turn to a local detective, Augustus Landor, 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 rigours of the military and a penchant for poetry – a young man named Edgar Allan Poe.”
The trailer itself doesn’t give a great deal away, apart from a suitably gothic atmosphere and a glimpse of Melling’s mysterious maverick.
Speaking to Variety regarding Landor and Poe’s association, Bale recently said: “He dismisses him initially, but comes to find him to be the centrepiece of his life, which he would be quite embarrassed to admit, with his age and standing and everything.
“He does find himself maybe learning new things, and is certainly reminded of things that he’d forgotten about life.”
The Pale Blue Eye is scheduled for cinemas on December 23, and Netflix on January 6.
