The first full-length trailer for the provocative sci-fi thriller The Discovery offers more insight into the sinister details behind the story. The movie, starring Rooney Mara and Jason Segel, is part love story, part alternate universe in which the afterlife has been proven to exist, resulting in millions of suicides. The film’s early teaser offered up little more than that, with fractured scenes of doo-wop romance mixed with unsettling images of guns, violence and hospitals.
In the new trailer, we are privy to an interview between journalist Mary Steenburgen and Doctor Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford). Steenburgen asks tough questions, such as, “Don’t you think your discovery was just too dangerous to share with the world?” as we are treated to haunting scenes of graveyards and attempted suicides. Harbor answers Steenburgen’s question with a question: “How can we keep a discovery so vital to our existence a secret?” Harbor also says he prefers to refer to the afterlife as a “new plane of existence.” The interview ends suddenly when a cameraman shoots himself in the head.
The full trailer is no less engaging than the first teaser, if not more so. The score of piercing classical music causes us to feel the mounting sense of panic and urgency as the number of suicides increases past four million. The short clip promises more than a simple sci-fi thriller. It asks tough philosophical questions about the ethics behind Harbor’s discovery, and exploring how the horrifying aftermath changes the nature of human existence and mortality.
The Discovery premiered at Sundance and is set to be released on Netflix on March 31. Something tells us people are going to be talking about this one. Watch the new trailer above, and the preceding teaser here.