Next month, Halsey will release her highly anticipated new album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. As it turns out the pop star has also been working on a coinciding feature film of the same name to accompany the record. She just released a gothic trailer for it, which you can watch below.
Similarly dubbed If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, the film is written by Halsey and directed by Colin Tilley, her frequent collaborator who helmed the music videos for “Without Me” and “You Should Be Sad.” The movie is billed as “an hour-long film experience set to the music of her upcoming album” and, based on this new clip, looks rather brooding and intense.
The film trailer opens on a number of knights trotting on horses, torches in hand, towards an eerie castle while text takes over the screen. “This film is about the lifelong social labyrinth of sexuality and birth. The greatest horror stories never told were buried with the bodies of those who died in that labyrinth,” it reads. The camera then cuts to Halsey and others crying in time-period outfits as they mourn a loved one’s death. Spliced throughout are scenes of her having romantic romps, her pregnant stomach swelling, and her getting drunk with friends on a picnic, among many other things.
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Halsey’s film is scheduled to hit theaters in select cities in the US, with locations to be announced soon. Tickets to those IMAX screenings will go on sale August 3rd through Halsey’s website.
If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power — the album, not the movie — was produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which has fans expecting a darker, more electronic pop record. Lyrically, Halsey said it’s a “concept album about the joys and horrors of pregnancy and child birth,” and that the cover art conveys “the sentiment of my journey over the past few months.” It will be interesting to see how these descriptions fit with the film’s interpretation of the music, too. Until then, revisit that artwork and the full tracklist she’s describing here.