The First Teaser for Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Arrival’ Has Arrived

The first photos from Denis Villeneuve‘s latest film Arrival debuted earlier this week, and they revealed a big oval shaped object behind Amy Adams. This is a movie about aliens so could it be a spaceship? Yup!

The first teaser trailer for Arrival has arrived (I had to). A brief teaser debuted on NBC during The Today Show on Tuesday, but now Paramount has released a little more footage. The teaser shows Amy Adams’ Dr. Louise Banks boarding a helicopter on her way to that massive oblong object in a green field. Louise is brought on as an expert linguist to help interpret the extraterrestrials. Louise and Jeremy Renner’s Ian Donnelly put on hazmat suits as they prepare to enter the spaceship, which we learn opens up every 18 hours. They wait in front of a beam of bright white light.  So what now? “They arrive,” Forest Whittaker’s Colonel Weber says with a magnetic whispery delivery. (Does Whittaker know how to deliver a line or what?!) Below is the official synopsis:

When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) - is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

Written by Eric Heisserer (The Thing remake) and based on Ted Chiang’s short story, Story of Your Life (which the film was initially titled), Arrival is Villeneuve’s first foray into sci-fi storytelling. The Sicario filmmaker is best know for his taut, tense thrillers which often follow characters grappling with grief and family trauma. Arrival has been one of my most anticipated films of the year and I can’t wait to see how Villeneuve bring his signature atmosphere of intensity to a new genre.

If Villeneuve is a master at anything, it’s at restraint, knowing how to build intrigue and tension without giving too much away too soon – anyone who’s seen Incendies knows how paralyzing the film’s final reveal is once it arrives. He keeps you on the edge of tension until delivering a final gut punch. That why a movie about humans discovering aliens on Earth sounds like a great fit for the director. Too many sci-fi movies show their aliens too early or too extensively when less if often more. I love this first teaser simply because it doesn’t show us the creatures, instead cutting right before they arrive to keep that sense of mystery in tact. Arrival debuts at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival before hitting theaters on November 11.