Haunted by the tragic and bizarre death of her ex-husband, Harper (Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter) retreats to the countryside on a solo holiday to recuperate.
What begins as an opportunity to heal from her trauma by escaping to the comfort of a picturesque English village transforms slowly into her own personal waking nightmare. An awkward and unsettling encounter with Geoffrey, the owner of her holiday house, sets off a series of increasingly disturbing interactions with various men in the local village, all of whom have an ominously similar appearance.
Rory Kinnear (most well known for playing Bill Tanner in the recent Bond films as well as the unfortunate Prime Minister in the inaugural episode of Black Mirror) gives a distinctive performance several times over as he metamorphoses into the various stalkers that plague the grieving Harper, portrayed with taut fragility by rising star Jessie Buckley.
Following the huge commercial success of his directorial debut Ex Machina and 2018’s critically lauded Annihilation, Garland here turns his hand once again to psychological horror, a genre he has proved himself an expert in since his 1996 novel The Beach launched him to fame as one of the leading voices of Generation X.