Directed by Alex Garland — Screenplay by Alex Garland.

I would definitely describe myself as a fairly big fan of writer-director Alex Garland. Although he, as a writer, had already influenced a couple of personal favorite genre films in the early 2000s — specifically Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Sunshine — I must admit that I didn’t really know who he was until I saw his feature directorial debut titled EX_MACHINA, which is this breathtakingly fascinating and stunning science-fiction masterpiece. After blowing me away with his debut as a director, he cemented himself as a true master of the science-fiction genre with his equally thought-provoking and spellbinding sophomore effort titled ANNIHILATION. Following his sophomore directorial effort, his career trajectory changed slightly as he created, wrote, and directed the underseen but very good FX sci-fi series titled Devs. He then made his third feature as a director, but it, a folk horror film titled Men, didn’t quite receive the warm critical reception that his previous efforts did. Some might think that after the lukewarm reception to his third outing, he would be tempted to make something less button-pushing or with fewer potential pitfalls. Not so. Civil War, his fourth film as a director, is his biggest film yet, and it dares to imagine a world where tensions as a result of dangerous, hateful polarization — perhaps not unlike today — have devolved in such a way that the United States of America has entered into a modern — you guessed it — civil war. Along with the release of his biggest and potentially most controversial film yet, Garland has also suggested that he has fallen out of love with filmmaking and may be stepping down from directing. But if Civil War is evidence of anything for Garland, it is that he is a filmmaker who knows how to craft a fascinating film that can ratchet up the tension and ask interesting questions.