The Pale Blue Eye Trailer: Christian Bale Meets Edgar Allan Poe

Netflix has released the first teaser trailer for Christian Bale's latest, "The Pale Blue Eye," which also represents another collaboration for him with director Scott Cooper. Bale, who is coming off of this summer's "Thor: Love and Thunder," previously worked with Cooper on movies like "Out of the Furnace" and "Hostiles." This time? They're headed back to the 1800s for a mystery that ties into the king of old-time gothic spookiness, Edgar Allan Poe.

In this case, the legendary author behind "The Raven" and "The Masque of the Red Death" is played by Harry Melling, of "The Queen's Gambit" fame. So, how is it that Poe crosses paths with a man trying to solve a murder? Let's have a look-see.

This is very much just a teaser in the true sense of the word. We get very little sense of the story at hand, only that some soldiers have discovered a body and that warrants investigation. We don't hear much from Bale. Rather, we get quite a bit of voice-over from Melling as Poe, adding a sense of atmosphere to the whole thing. The movie, it's worth noting, is based on the book of the same name by Louis Bayard, which Cooper adapted for the screen. Given that the trailer doesn't give us too much, here's the official synopsis:

West Point, 1830. In the early hours of a gray winter morning, a cadet is found dead. But after the body arrives at the morgue, tragedy becomes savagery when it's discovered that the young man's heart has been skillfully removed. Fearing irreparable damage to the fledgling military academy, its leaders turn to a local detective, Augustus Landor (Christian Bale), to solve the murder. Stymied by the cadets' code of silence, Landor enlists the help of one of their own to pursue the case, an eccentric cadet with a disdain for the rigors of the military and a penchant for poetry—a young man named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).

The cast also includes Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Simon McBurney, Hadley Robinson, Timothy Spall, Joey Brooks, Brennan Cook, Gideon Glick, Fred Hechinger, Matt Helm, Jack Irving, Steven Maier, Charlie Tahan, and Robert Duvall.

Cooper, Bale, Tyler Thompson, and John Lesher are on board as producers, with Tracey Landon, Dylan Weathered, Louis Bayard, Chris Sharp, Jennifer Lamb, Emily Salveson, and Ryan Smith serving as executive producers.

"Pale Blue Eye" hits select theaters on December 23 before arriving on Netflix on January 3, 2023.