If you were to drunkenly use Mad Libs to generate a film pitch, you might get something like Colossal:
A woman played by Les Miserables actress Anne Hathaway discovers that she can somehow control the bodily movements of an enormous, Godzilla-like creature in Seoul, South Korea.
This is a real film that exists, and allow that fact—and its trailer—to serve as a brief, whimsical break from the marathon media coverage of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration this weekend:
Colossal currently enjoys a solid 75% positive score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews from last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where it debuted. The film is now playing at the independent cinema-focused Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The film is directed by Nacho Vigalondo, a Spanish filmmaker best known for the 2007 cult sci-fi film Timecrimes. Colossal is neither awards bait nor a truly independent film (new distributor Neon bought it before the festival)—but there’s still plenty of room at Sundance for oddball films of all varieties.
Indeed, it was just last year that Swiss Army Man, a film starring Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame) as a farting corpse, premiered to positive reviews at the festival. Film distributors (which now include Netflix and Amazon) descend on Park City every year with the hope of acquiring the next Manchester by the Sea, which debuted at the festival last year and is now expected to receive several Oscar nominations when they’re announced next week.
The Hathamonster will stomp into theaters in the US on April 7.