How do you follow up an Oscar win and a charming viral acceptance speech that was more British than a freshly baked scone?

If you’re Olivia Colman, you dive straight into a gritty real-life horror movie. The Oscar winner will star in Them That Follow, a terrifying independent movie about a religious community living in total isolation in the Appalachian Mountains in the US alongside Alice Englert and Walton Goggins.

Englert plays Mara, a young woman promised to a man she does not love because her father (Goggins), a snake-handling pastor – when are they ever anything but? – wants to control her life. Colman’s character is called Hope Slaughter (yes, you read that right), and her exact relationship to Mara is unknown. 

What is clear, however, is that Colman’s role in the film will involve dispensing chilling one-liners and skin-crawling proclamations. “Who you choose girl chooses your whole life,” Colman says in the trailer. Later, she tells Mara: “When the devil creeps in, you need someone to see the truth even when you don’t.”

You can watch the first trailer below: 

Scary, scary stuff! And we’re not even talking about the snakes, although those hissing reptiles certainly bring the temperature of the room down a notch. We’re talking about Colman’s eerie performance and the way she looks at poor Mara, who should be very concerned about her wellbeing if you ask us.

The movie received mostly positive reviews out of Sundance, with many singling out Colman’s performance.

“A terrific supporting turn from the always practically perfect Olivia Colman, who goes to town with her portrait of a zealous convert to the faith facing some tough choices of her own,” The Hollywood Reporter noted.

“It’s a tribute to the Oscar-nominated Colman’s talent that she feels deeply, credibly complicated even with the most potentially cartoonish character in the film,” Variety noted. “At one point, Hope even wears a T-shirt with a wolf howling at the moon, for Chrissakes.” 

“Among a cast crowded with first-rate talent, Colman reigns supreme and boosts the work of her fellow actors, playing a stern enforcer desperate to secure both her salvation and that of her only child. In a handful of scenes, she gives the movie’s most mentally punishing performance, one that ranks alongside her best work,” wrote The Wrap.

Is that the sound of more Oscar buzz for Colman that we hear? We can’t wait for the movie to arrive in cinemas in the US on 2 August (with a release date in the UK to come shortly) and see for ourselves. 

Images: Getty