Filmmaker Alex Garland is known for thought-provoking sci-fi films, having written the “28 Days Later” films and the upcoming belated sequel, the kickstart-the-sun space film, “Sunshine,” and directing his own films like “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation,” and more. But lately, particularly with the horror “Men,” Garland surely knows how to rattle the cage of audiences and seems to be doing it more provocatively in his last few films and poking the cultural bear, as it were. “Men” tackled ideas of toxic masculinity and the evils of men, and his latest film, “Civil War,” looks at the divided cultural wars of America, creating a fictional but potentially all-too-real scenario where a broken nation splinters into war.
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The synopsis of the film and its details have been kept bare. But it appears to be about a group of photojournalists who are covering this civil war and their road trip toward the nation’s capital, where rapidly escalating violence erupts into something even more deadly and dangerous, engulfing the country in all-out conflict.
“Civil War” stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, and Nick Offerman. Jesse Plemons and Jonica T. Gibbs also have roles in the film.
The drama also reunites Garland with many of the cast members from his underrated and underseen sci-fi thriller FX series, “Devs,” which featured Spaeny, Henderson, Mizuno, and Offerman.
The synopsis of the film is very spare and reads, “an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razor’s edge.”
But what we do know from the previous trailer is that the dystopian near-future film centers on an America with three warring forces: the American government and the loyalist states, the separatist “Western Forces” led by Texas and California, the “Florida Alliances.”
“Civil War” is scheduled to be released theatrically on April 12, 2024, by A24 in the United States and will be available in IMAX too. Watch the latest trailer below.
