Netflix has released the first trailer for the mystery film The Pale Blue Eye. In the footage, Christian Bale plays an aging detective who teams with one of the world’s most famous poets to solve a series of murders.
The year is 1830, and Augustus Landor (Bale), a seasoned detective, is summoned to West Point to investigate a disturbing matter. The body of a dead cadet is found, and the young boy’s heart has been carved from his chest. When another boy goes missing, Landor enlists the help of Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling) to find answers from his fellow cadets. As he searches for the truth, Landor discovers the deaths may be tied to a ritual that achieves immortality. As the voice in the trailer states, “Man will do most anything to cheat death.”
The unsettling footage follows Landor and Poe’s quest to solve the murders. The more blood and symbols they discover, the more they realize that supernatural elements might be at play. The Pale Blue Eye features a younger version of Poe before he would go on to write famous literary works like The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, and The Pit and the Pendulum.
Co-starring alongside Bale and Melling are Gillian Anderson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lucy Boynton, Harry Lawtey, Toby Jones, Timothy Spall, Simon McBurney, and Robert Duvall. The Pale Blue Eye is written and directed by Scott Cooper. This marks the third collaboration between Bale and Cooper, having previously worked on 2013’s Out of the Furnace and 2017’s Hostiles.
The Pale Blue Eye will premiere in select theaters on December 23. The film streams to Netflix on January 6, 2023.
