Nicolas Cage plays a father of two in the throes of a dystopian world in the trailer for post-apocalyptic thriller Arcadian.
A bit reminiscent of A Quiet Place, Arcadian takes place in a near future where normal life on Earth has been decimated. Cage portrays Paul, who, along with his sons Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) and Joseph (Jaeden Martell), inhabit a world where mysterious creatures emerge at night to unleash evil on the little population that remains. When Thomas doesn’t return home one day before sundown, Paul sets out to find him, resulting in what the synopsis calls a “nightmarish battle” for survival.
It’s unclear what caused the societal collapse, but the eerie trailer theorizes that the arrival of the creatures is climate related. “There are those who believe they came after the pollution people caused,” Cage’s Paul says in a voiceover, “and they’re here to cleanse the planet of the human race; so we’ll all become extinct.”
The thriller will world premiere at SXSW on March 11 and arrive in theaters April 12.