In The Lobster, Colin Farrell once again finds himself on the wrong side of the law—but this time all he’s done is fail to meet that special someone in a society where singledom is illegal. Luckily for Farrell, in this brave new world—imagined by director Yorgos Lanthimos, who also made the great and unforgettably odd movie Dogtooth—there’s a facility dedicated to helping (read: forcing) people to fall in love. Those who fail to make a match in 45 days are turned into an animal of their choosing. You can guess from the title what kind of critter Farrell will become if he’s not up to the task.
The movie, which is Lanthimos’s English-language debut, got mostly rave reviews after its premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it took home the Jury Prize. The trailer is intriguing enough on its own, but critics also noted that there’s more to the movie than meets the eye—including some satire of the kind of snap-judgment dating we engage in on sites like Tinder.