NEW YORK — Alex Garland’s films have vividly conjured a virus-caused pandemic (2002’s “28 Days Later”), an uncontrollable artificial intelligence (2014’s “Ex Machina”) and, in his latest, “Civil War,” a near-future America in the throes of all-out warfare.
Most filmmakers with such a record might claim some knack for tapping into the zeitgeist. But Garland doesn’t see it that way. He’s dealing, he said, with omnipresent realities that demand no great leaps of vision. He wrote “Civil War” in 2020, when societies around the world were unraveling over COVID-19 and the prospect of societal breakdown was on everyone’s minds.
“That was pretty deafening back then,” Garland said. “So in a way, it’s slightly past zeitgeist. It’s actually oppressive.”
“Civil War” is an ominous attempt to turn widely held American anxieties into a violent, unsettling big-screen reality. Garland’s film opened Friday — the anniversary, to the day, of when the Civil War began in 1861. And it’s landing in movie theaters just months ahead of a momentous presidential election, making it potentially Hollywood’s most explosive movie of the year.