Alexan­der Skars­gård is a man on a mis­sion in the first Mute trailer

Neon night­mares and some ques­tion­able facial hair fea­ture in the first trail­er for Dun­can Jones’ high­ly antic­i­pat­ed Mute, which the direc­tor has labelled ​“Don Quixote” in ref­er­ence to Ter­ry Gilliam’s con­tin­u­ous­ly delayed project. Alexan­der Skars­gård – cur­rent­ly rid­ing the wave of praise for his role in HBO’s Big Lit­tle Lies – plays a mute bar­man named Leo in a futur­is­tic Berlin, who sets out to find his miss­ing girl­friend. If the trail­er is any­thing to go by, expect moody close-ups of Skars­gård look­ing sad, Justin Ther­oux in a dodgy wig, and some pri­mo mous­tache action from Paul Rudd.

Mute marks a depar­ture from Jones’ recent projects – War­craft and Source Code – which have tend­ed to opt for a big bud­get approach, fea­tur­ing clever con­cepts smoth­ered by weak sto­ry­lines. Jones has referred to Mute as the sec­ond film in a tril­o­gy that he began with the much-laud­ed Moon, in which Sam Rock­well deliv­ered a mind-alter­ing per­for­mance as a lone­ly astro­naut suf­fer­ing from dou­ble vision.

Jones has been keep­ing fans updat­ed about Mute on Twit­ter, and recent­ly praised Net­flix for grant­i­ng him com­plete cre­ative free­dom as a direc­tor. This dis­play of grat­i­tude may be a sub­tle nod to Source Code, which Jones seems to have viewed as a dis­trac­tion from more mean­ing­ful work.

The trail­er promis­es much in terms of plot and a bright-light dark city aes­thet­ic, while a score by his Moon col­lab­o­ra­tor Clint Mansell should lift the film to tense and synth-heavy heights. Jones has enthused about Mansell’s work on Twit­ter, stat­ing: ​“I’ve heard the Mute score by @iamclintmansell enough times to be able to say it may well be as good as the Moon score.”

Get a flavour of Mute for your­self below, and look out for it arriv­ing on Net­flix on Feb­ru­ary 23.