"February" Trailer Promises a Long, Bleak and Spooky Winter

In terms of look and feel, the trailer for the new movie February has plenty in common with the month whose name it shares. It has a harsh, bleak atmosphere and a sort of persistent coldness about it that you can’t quite shake. When it ends, you may feel like you’ve just gone through a two and a half minute long bout of seasonal affective disorder.

Perhaps part of this can be chalked up to the fact that the trailer appears to have little interest in letting viewers feel comfortable or settled. The initial premise of the film is pretty straightforward. Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton) are students at an all-girls boarding school. They’re not friends, but they get paired up when their parents fail to show up to visit them. Beyond that is where things get tricky. We meet Joan (Emma Roberts), a girl with a dark past who seems to be cutting a bloody path directly towards the boarding school. One night Kat encounters a mysterious apparition and becomes possessed by it. Suddenly, she’s aggressive, she’s randomly vomiting and she’s starting to look more and more like Joan. These events, the characters, relationships, histories, they're all presented in an ambiguous, almost besides-the-point way, which helps build that feeling of unease.

February also stars James Remar (Dexter). It was written and directed by Oz Perkins (son of original Norman Bates Anthony Perkins). The film recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is slated for a yet-to-be-determined 2016 release. Perhaps in ... February?