28 Days Later writer’s Civil War continues to confuse in its second trailer

Civil War – no, not the Marvel one, the A24 one – just got its second trailer, and the film’s approach to a politically dystopian United States still isn’t any clearer.

When I saw the first trailer for Civil War, the next film from 28 Days Later and Enslaved Odyssey to the West writer Alex Garland (who was also the story supervisor on that poorly received Devil May Cry reboot), I could only think one single word: “what?” It didn’t really offer all that much context, other than the fact that there’s another civil war happening in America, with Texas and California teaming up against the entire rest of the US because of… reasons? From an outside, UK-based perspective, Texas, a traditionally Republican-leaning state, and California, a Democrat-leaning state, seems like an odd pairing, though I’m sure Garland has something planned out.

The second trailer for the upcoming film is now out, and in all honesty, it hasn’t really shed much more light on this strange, alternate reality. It does give us another look at the film’s strong cast, which includes Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man), Wagner Moura (Narcos), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Dune: Part One), Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim Uprising), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad), and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation), who’s playing this world’s US president.

While the second trailer is light on context, it does have a pretty eerie whistled version of the US’ national anthem, as well as a shot that shows what appears to be a soldier blowing up the Lincoln Memorial, which surely has some kind of political messaging to it. What that message is, I have no idea, which pretty much applies to the entirety of this film.

You won’t have to wait long to find out what actually is happening in Civil War though, as the film is hitting cinemas April 12, just a couple of months away.