A24
As it turns out, you can take the vampire out of Twilight and find some pretty unexpected results. With The Rover, the new film from director and writer David Michôd (Animal Kingdom), Robert Pattinson sheds his sparkly teen vampire image yet again to take part in a dark and dreary drama devoid of all supernatural intervention. Pack all your girlish screams away somewhere, because this isn’t the time or place.
“Anarchy is loosed upon the world,” and it’s up to Eric (Guy Pearce) to dig through that chaos as “things fall apart” in the Australian outback (things are really bleak out there). His quest: to hunt down a strange band of criminals who have taken hold of his last possession as he attempts to stay alive and keep his head above water in the process.
In his journey, he meets Rey (Pattinson), one of the members of the gang who have messed with his life. Rey is injured and alone, no longer the menacing threat he used to pose to Eric when he and his gang stormed into his life long before. But now Eric recognizes that Rey can no longer hurt him, and scoops him up along for the ride. With Rey’s gang leaving him in the dust by himself at the beginning of the trailer, he doesn’t have much of a choice, now does he?
Check out the trailer for The Rover below.
“If you don’t learn to fight, your death’s coming real soon,” Eric warns Rey, but who’s bringing that death and what they’re fighting remains somewhat of a mystery. The trailer does an adequate job of setting up a desolate landscape out in the Australian desert. We’re treated to spinning cars and brown brush, sickly looking characters and buckets and buckets of dust, but is it enough to set up a compelling enough story to draw audiences in for a whole film?
Yes, Rey is left behind by a gang that needs to get away, and now he’s attached to Eric in a twisted revenge story, but what exactly are they getting revenge for? Where are they headed? What will they find? “Anarchy is loosed on the world” seems a bit meaningless when it’s focused on a few guys trying to maim each other. But then again, maybe their tiff has much more meaning than can just be summed up in a few minutes.
The Rover hits Cannes first before spilling into the U.S. on June 20th.
