'Captive State' Trailer: Chicago Is Occupied By Alien Invaders

Do you often find yourself complaining about how Hollywood is out of ideas?

Director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) is here to combat that lack of creativity with an original science fiction film called Captive State, in which the city of Chicago has been occupied by alien overlords for ten years. John Goodman, Vera Farmiga, and Ashton Sanders (the teenaged Chiron from Moonlight) lead the cast, and Focus Features has just released a brand new trailer. Watch it below.

Wyatt broke out with 2008's The Escapist, moved on to kickstart the excellent new Apes trilogy in 2011, and then directed Mark Wahlberg in a 2014 remake of The Gambler that tanked at the box office. He hasn't made a movie since then, but Captive State marks his return to the big screen. Wyatt co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Erica Beeney, who wrote the Shia LaBeouf-starring Project Greenlight movie The Battle of Shaker Heights.

This project has some familiar shades to it (District 9 immediately comes to mind, and I got some serious The Purge vibes from the initial teaser trailer), and I'm wondering if an English filmmaker is the right person to direct a movie that seems like it could be a commentary on race relations and violence in America. We shall see, but I'm giving this one the benefit of the doubt for now and I'm glad to see Wyatt tell an original story. Talking about Captive State a few years ago, he said, "It's very grounded and relatable to our world. It's not space opera or anything like that." Looks like he was able to capture that tone in the final movie.

Set in a Chicago neighborhood nearly a decade after an occupation by an extra-terrestrial force, Captive State explores the lives on both sides of the conflict – the collaborators and dissidents.

Captive State opens in theaters on March 29, 2019.