‘Evolution’ Trailer Teases a Surreal and Stunning Sci-Fi Experience

If you loved Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, then you’re going to want to pay attention to Evolution. After debuting at TIFF in 2015, Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s gorgeous and surreal sci-fi drama spent the past year on the festival circuit, playing everywhere from Paris to Portland. And now that Evolution is finally heading to theaters in November, IFC Midnight has released a new trailer that offers a tantalizing preview as enigmatic and unnerving as the film itself.

Evolution is only the third film from Hadzihalilovic, Gaspar Noe’s longtime collaborator and business partner, who has released one film every decade for the past 30 years. But Evolution is well worth the wait with its eerie coming-of-age tale of a boy who lives on an island where the only other kids are boys, and the only adults are women. It’s an elusive and elegant film that blends sci-fi, horror and mystery with provocative themes and stunning cinematography — so although IFC Midnight has the distribution rights (which means it’ll be readily available on VOD), you should try to see this one in a theater if possible.

Here’s the official synopsis:

This eerily seductive mind-bender is a dark, dreamlike descent into the depths of the unknown. Ten-year-old Nicolas (Max Brebant) lives in a remote seaside village populated only by boys his age and adult women. But when he makes a disturbing discovery beneath the ocean waves—a dead boy with a red starfish on his stomach—Nicolas begins to question everything about his existence. What are the half-remembered images he recalls, as if from another life? If the woman he lives with is not his mother, then who is she? And what awaits the boys when they are all suddenly confined to a hospital? The long-awaited new film from the acclaimed director of Innocence is awash in the haunting, otherworldly images of a nightmare.

Evolution hits theaters on November 25.