Bong Joon-ho ratch­ets up the dread in first Par­a­site trailer

Ear­ly spring is a mag­i­cal time of year, when the movies ready­ing them­selves for the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val first test the waters with hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed trail­ers in advance of their world pre­mieres. One such odds-on Com­pe­ti­tion pick is Bong Joon-ho​’s lat­est fea­ture Par­a­site, now teas­ing audi­ences before the Offi­cial Selec­tion announce­ment on 18 April.

The trail­er comes to our glob­al inter­net by way of South Korea, and hasn’t yet been trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. But those not-so-well-versed in the lan­guage can still glean plen­ty from the clip, as well as the recent­ly unveiled poster.

For one, the video’s cap­tion describes the film as ​“the sto­ry of a sol­dier who is strug­gling to get up and run­ning with his grand­fa­ther Guyu (Choi Woo-shik).” We know that Bong reg­u­lar Song Kang-ho por­trays the sol­dier, but it’s unclear how that syn­op­sis could over­lap with the pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed sum­ma­ry allud­ing to two col­lid­ing fam­i­lies imbued with unspec­i­fied spe­cial powers.

The images cut togeth­er in this trail­er raise more ques­tions than they answer – a gas attack, a flood, blood spat­ter­ing onto a sand­wich. But for the most part every­one is on their smart­phones or mak­ing somber faces.

The title and even the vaguest con­tours of the premise sug­gest that Bong will return to his favored ground of sci-fi for this new effort. Still, it’s unclear whether he will return to the lit­er­al­ized crea­ture-fea­ture thrills of Okja and The Host, or attempt some­thing more ambi­ent and abstract.

Take a look at the poster below, and pon­der the sig­nif­i­cance of everyone’s cen­sored eyes and the unset­tling reflec­tion of a teepee.

Par­a­site comes to the­aters in South Korea on 15 June. NEON has pur­chased US dis­tri­b­u­tion rights for a 2019 release.