Some secrets follow you all the way to the edge of the world.

Martin McDonagh, the writer-director behind In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin, returns with his fifth feature. It’s a pitch-black comedy that earned a standing ovation of more than ten minutes at its Venice Film Festival premiere. Wild Horse Nine arrives at Everyman on 6 November 2026 from Searchlight Pictures.

It’s 1973, and Chile is on the brink of a coup. Veteran CIA officer Chris (John Malkovich) and his long-time protégé Lee (Sam Rockwell) are sent from Santiago to Easter Island by their bureau chief MJ (Steve Buscemi). Far from the capital, the old partners find their pasts catching up with them. When Chris strikes up an unlikely friendship with two rebellious students (Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas), the whole trip starts to come apart.

McDonagh has been fascinated by the coup since his teens, and the story clicked once he built it around one man’s guilt and regret. Malkovich’s Chris grows pricklier and more forgetful under the weight of what he’s done. Rockwell reunites with the director who guided him to an Oscar for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Parker Posey plays Lee’s wife Marge, and Tom Waits appears as Chris’s brother. It was shot on location on Rapa Nui and in Santiago, one of very few Hollywood productions ever filmed on the island, with music from long-time McDonagh composer Carter Burwell.

Expect razor-sharp dialogue, sudden swerves from laughter into something far sadder, and a sun-bleached island backdrop that hides much more than it reveals.

Did you know?

Steve Buscemi came in when Mark Ruffalo dropped out, making this his first McDonagh film. He admits he “practically stalked” the director at the Venice Film Festival a few years ago to tell him they had to work together. 

See this if you liked...