Global politics is already enough of a nightmare to earn its own horror movie, but what would happen if we actually stuck politicians inside a horror film? That’s the thesis for Rumours, a new film starring Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, and Alicia Vikander about what happens when a handful of politicians have to come up with a plan for the end of the world.
The new trailer, proudly announcing Ari Aster as an executive producer, echoes both well-known satire tropes and familiar ideas of global apocalypse as faced by a very small amount of people. (Think A Quiet Place, but with the characters from The Thick of It.) Hailing from directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, the film’s synopsis is as follows:
Ricocheting between comedy, apocalyptic horror, and swooning soap opera, Rumours follows the seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at the annual G7 summit, where they attempt to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. With unexpected, uproarious performances from a brilliant ensemble cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, and Charles Dance, these so-called leaders become spectacles of incompetence, contending with increasingly surreal obstacles in the misty woods as night falls and they realize they are suddenly alone. A genre-hopping satire of political ineptitude, the latest film from incomparable directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson is a journey into the absurd heart of power and institutional failure in a slowly burning world.
Alongside Aster, Blanchett also executive produces the film, which also stars Roy Dupuis, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Takehiro Hira, Denis Ménochet, Rolando Ravello, and Zlatko Buric. Rumours is director Maddin’s second collaboration with the Johnson brothers, after 2017’s The Green Fog, a loose experimental remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic thriller Vertigo.
Rumours, however, is an entirely original endeavor, full of bog bodies and giant brains in a script co-written by all three directors. The film is produced by Liz Jarvis, Philipp Kreuzer, and Lars Knudsen, with executive producers Phyllis Laing, Jorg Schulze, Joe Neurauter, Tyler Campellone, Adrian Love, Michael O'Leary, Andrew Karpen, and Kent Sanderson.
Rumours hits theaters on October 18. Check out the new trailer below:
