Jane Campion’s Western The Power Of The Dog Gets A Trailer

After announcing Jane Campion‘s The Power Of The Dog was heading to BFI London Film Festival, Netflix have obliged by releasing the film’s first official teaser Trailer…Our appetites are salivating!

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in the lead role on the film that’s based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage. He plays charismatic rancher Phil Burbank inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love.

Visually we always know this film will be stunning, that’s trademark Jane Campion. The trailer does have a lot of atmosphere, sharp direction that builds the hype and that Netflix will have awards on their minds too.

Related Post: Jane Campions The Power Of The Dog To Get London Film Festival Premiere

Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil’s romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides.

The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, revelling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter – all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her.

As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form – he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?

The film also stars Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-Mhee, Thomasin McKenzie, s Conroy, Keith Carradine, Peter Carroll, and Adam Beach.

The Power Of The Dog will make it’s UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival from 11th October. It will also play in select UK cinemas in November then everywhere on Netflix from 1st December.