'The Hateful Eight' Trailer: Quentin Tarantino Cabin Fever

Few active filmmakers have as distinct a screenwriting voice and directorial style as Quentin Tarantino, which is why so many cinephiles have been anticipating his eighth feature film, The Hateful Eight, since it was announced (and then was re-confirmed, after nearly being shelved by the filmmaker when an early script draft leaked online). Hateful Eight marks the second venture into the vintage American western genre by Tarantino, following his Oscar-Winning "Southern-fried" western Django Unchained.

Hateful Eight will feature the hallmarks (quirky characters, dark humor) that've come to be associated with Tarantino's work, though story-wise this movie recalls the filmmaker's debut with Reservoir Dogs - as it explores what happens when a pack of dangerous strangers wind up stuck together, only to slowly realize that they share "a deadly connection" (as the official trailer puts it).

You can watch the new full-length Hateful Eight trailer, above. For more details, here is the film's official synopsis:

In The Hateful Eight, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice.

Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass.

When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Demián Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…

The newly-released Hateful Eight footage - much of which was shown during the film's panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2015 - certainly has the look and feel of a Tarantino feature, be it in terms of dark comedy (SLJ casually sitting atop a pile of frozen bodies), the finely-crafted monologues, and/or the offbeat, yet threatening, nature of the various characters (played by and large by the director's favorite collaborators). Hateful Eight will largely take place within the boundaries of the blizzard-struck Minnie's Haberdashery, but the film's trailer alone features a number of gorgeously expansive visuals - be they depicting snowy landscapes or Minnie's shadowy interiors - as a result of Tarantino having shot the film in 70 mm.

Tarantino's decision to have filmed Hateful Eight in 70 mm looks to payoff well, by making the movie's intimate and dialogue-heavy narrative feel all the grander in scale (and thus, more dramatic). Couple that with the news that the film will include the first western score from the legendary Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West) in over forty years, and there's fair reason to believe Hateful Eight will prove to be something quite special... for Tarantino fans, at the very least.