Christian Bale Faces an Edgar Allan Poe Mystery in The Pale Blue Eye Trailer (Video)

Christian Bale plays an intrepid detective tasked with solving a grisly murder in Scott Cooper’s new Netflix mystery The Pale Blue Eye. But he doesn’t do it alone — he gets help from Edgar Allan Poe.

Based on the 2003 book by Louis Bayard and adapted for the screen by Cooper, The Pale Blue Eye follows Bale as a detective who “is hired to discreetly investigate the gruesome murder of a cadet. Stymied by the cadets’ code of silence, he enlists one of their own to help unravel the case — a young man the world would come to know as Edgar Allan Poe,” according to Netflix’s official description of the trailer.

Harry Melling (Harry Potter, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Queen’s Gambit) plays young Poe, who encounters Bale’s character Augustus Landor in the year 1830 when a young fellow cadet at West Point is murdered and his heart carved from his chest in a gruesome and puzzling act of violence.

In select theaters in December and streaming on Netflix on January 6, The Pale Blue Eye gives us a rare — though fictional — glimpse into the life of a young Edgar Allan Poe, before he became obsessed with the macabre and creepy lifestyle depicted in his future works, like The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Cask of Amontillado.

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The Pale Blue Eye also features an ensemble cast including Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody) Gillian Anderson (Sex Education), Robert Duvall (Crazy Heart), Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Timothy Spall (Harry Potter), Hadley Robinson (Little Women) and Harry Lawtey (Industry).

This is Cooper’s third project with Bale, who also serves as a producer. Their previous films include Hostiles and Out of the Furnace. Cooper’s directing credits also include Crazy Heart and Black Mass.

Watch the full trailer above.

Main Image: (L to R) Christian Bale as Augustus Landor and Harry Melling as Edgar Allan Poe in The Pale Blue Eye. Cr. Scott Garfield/Netflix.