Justin Kurzel doesn’t make it easy. Notwithstanding the oddity that is his Assassin’s Creed movie, the Australian auteur has distinct eyes for horrors—so we see in his true-crime project Snowtown, blistering Kelly Gang, or the bloodiest Macbeth adaptation ever put to screen. Understand some premature queasiness, then, about Nitram, his picture concerning the 1996 mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, that prompted lasting changes in Australia’s gun laws. Add in the oft-unsettling screen presence that is Caleb Landry Jones—back from a trip making surprisingly excellent music—and, well…
But an anticipated film’s an anticipated film and those don’t come every day, so here’s a trailer and poster ahead of next week’s Cannes premiere. No laughs. But every shot by Kurzel and DP Germain McMicking lands, with Jones’ hulking force looking like a major coup on Nitram‘s part.
Find preview and poster below:
Nitram (Caleb Landry-Jones) lives with his mother (Judy Davis) and father (Anthony LaPaglia) in suburban Australia in the Mid 1990s. He lives a life of isolation and frustration at never being able to fit in. That is until he unexpectedly finds a close friend in a reclusive heiress, Helen (Essie Davis). However when that friendship meets its tragic end, and Nitram’s loneliness and anger grow, he begins a slow descent into a nightmare that culminates in the most nihilistic and heinous of acts.
