Midsommar Star Jack Reynor Releases Trailer for Directorial Debut Bainne

Midsommar star Jack Reynor is making his directorial debut with his short film, titled Bainne. Now, a fresh, new trailer is giving us a first glimpse of the stirring, supernatural short.

The short stars Will Poulter, who worked alongside Reynor on Midsommar, and is also known for The Maze Runner, the Leonardo DiCaprio-led thriller The Revenant and Netflix’s interactive psychological thriller Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Poulter will play a hunger-stricken farmhand who comes across a ghostly female figure.

Completely shot in his home in Ireland and pulling Reynor back to his roots, the short takes place in the Irish countryside during the great famine.

The ominous black-and-white trailer offers up eerie shots of that countryside, including a vacant field, a desperate-looking man clinging to a gate and a cloaked figure enveloped by shadows in the woods.

The short comes right off the back of Midsommar, as Reynor launched into production right after coming home from filming the unsettling, hypnotic and frankly unhinged Ari Aster horror flick.

Per Variety, Reynor also penned the script, citing influences including his love for Japanese film, especially Masaki Kobayashi’s ghost story anthology Kwaidan. It’s no coincidence that the writer behind Kwaidan’s source material was Irishman Lafcadio Hearn, who grew up in Ireland right after the famine and was inspired by the superstitions and ghost stories borne from that tragedy.

Reynor adapted one of Hearn’s stories into Bainne, which means “milk” in Irish, and was especially influenced by the culture of shame and silence rooted in surviving the famine.

Bainne is set to debut at the Galway Film Festival on July 13. For those of us who can’t wait until then, check out the trailer below.