A guy wakes up with no memory of who he is — or who the beautiful scientist outfitting him with a cyborg body is. She tells him his name is Henry and that she’s his wife. Then the bad guys break in and steal her.
Sounds like a video game, right? It’s actually the trippy trailer for a new live-action sci-fi movie called Hardcore Henry. The buzzy indie film was shot using a first-person perspective that puts you in Henry’s shoes — it’s like you’re trapped in a violent videogame, with a super-strong robot hand and other cyborg embellishments.
Check out the bizarre Hardcore Henry trailer below. It’s chock-full of utterly bonkers action, that Queen song that rocked Shaun of the Dead, and a voiceless, faceless main character who stands-in for the audience, just like in a video game.
It looks like some kind of crazy cross between Crank and Call of Duty.
In a nod to its wild, video game-inspired aesthetic, the trailer premiered last night on Twitch, the videogame-streaming website that’s the de facto standard for gamers watching other gamers play games.
The film, which got its start as a $250,000 Kickstarter project in 2014, took the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award at the Toronto Film Festival last year, sparking a bit of a bidding war.
Written and directed by Ilya Naishuller, Hardcore Henry stars Haley Bennett and Sharlto Copley. It’s scheduled for an April 8 theatrical release.
