What do you get when you combine two Oscar nominees in one thrilling futuristic project? A hell of a lot of buzz. For reasons we hardly need to explain, the internet is currently going wild at the thought of Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal starring opposite one another in Foe, the upcoming dystopian thriller directed by Garth Davis.

Based on the Ian Reid novel, with a screenplay by Reid and Davis, this twisty marital thriller sees Ronan and Mescal portray Junior and Henrietta, a husband and wife living in a rural farmhouse 40 or so years into the future. But their quiet life is thrown into turmoil when an uninvited stranger named Terrance (Aaron Pierre) shows up at their door with a startling proposal.

When Terrance arrives, he introduces himself as an agent of the government and tells the couple that Junior must leave the increasingly uninhabitable planet to go to space. Little else has been revealed about the plot, but the premise is unsettling, to put it mildly. 

Watch the trailer for yourself below:

While billed as an apocalyptic science fiction film, Foe is being described as a haunting exploration of marriage and identity set in an uncertain world. According to reports, the film will ask persistent questions about the nature of humanity (and artificial humanity) in the not-too-distant future. Sounds very Black Mirror indeed.

Writer-director Davis told Vanity Fair that the dilapidated farm is symbolic of Hen and Junior’s fraught relationship. “Their marriage is decaying with the house in many ways – the house for me is almost like a house of ghosts,” Davis said. “It’s been a patriarchal, generational, rural symbol, with the multiple generations moving through there. The environment was constantly reinforcing the themes of what Henrietta was fighting against, wanting to push up against, and escape from.

“What I find really powerful about the movie is it asks us to be awake and to be alive. A lot of the problems we face in relationships and with the environment and with all sorts of things coming our way is that we’re asleep at the wheel. This movie is really saying, ‘Wake up. Your life is precious, and if you take it for granted, you’re going to lose it.’” 

With a release date of 20 October, Mescal and Ronan will soon be lighting up our screens. In the meantime, check out our roundup of the best modern dystopia novels that will make you see the world in a very different way.

Images: Amazon Studios/Simon & Schuster