Kristen Stewart Teams With Oscar Isaac For 80s Vampire Thriller From The Best Horror Director Today

What is Flesh of the Gods about, exactly? The movie takes place in 1980s Los Angeles, and Kristen Stewart and Oscar Isaac play a wealthy married couple who both want to walk on the wild side. Accordingly, they are taken in by a mysterious woman called the Nameless, who shows these wealthy elites the pleasure that comes from embracing pure hedonism and stark violence.

According to the film’s director, the movie’s events reflect its setting quite well. Cosmatos claims that “like Los Angeles itself, Flesh of the Gods inhabits the liminal realm between fantasy and nightmare.” That’s a claim that could be viewed with skepticism except for the director’s previous film, Mandy. The Nicolas Cage thriller made the very real Shadow Mountains feel like a waking nightmare filled with dangerous cults and brutal bikers who may or may not be demons from hell.

Reading a bit between the lines, however, it seems like Kristen Stewart and Oscar Isaac will be very different protagonists from the star of Mandy. In the earlier film, Nicolas Cage plays a kind of everyman figure whose life is turned upside down when his wife is attacked and murdered by a roving band of psychos. In Flesh of the Gods, it seems like our main characters willingly embrace the darkness offered by their vampiric temptress, wanting to escape the trappings of mere wealth and embrace the kind of world full of violent indulgences that Cage was trying to get his vengeance on.

In this sense, it sounds like Cosmatos wants to use Kristen Stewart and Oscar Isaac to dramatize how seductive the vampire lifestyle could be. The director claims Flesh of the Gods “will take you on a hot rod joy ride deep into the glittering heart of hell.” That seeming contradiction–that embracing what is completely wrong can feel completely right–is at the heart of the best vampire seduction stories, and it sounds like it will be on full display in this new film.

We’ve mostly focused on the director and the cast, but there are other reasons to be hyped about this upcoming movie. For example, it’s written by Andrew Kevin Walker, the same man who wrote both Se7en and The Killer. Plus, it sounds retro-fabulous, with producer Adam McKay promising a movie filled with “choice ’80s punk, style and attitude for miles” that will send “ripples through popular culture, fashion, music and film.”

If nothing else, you know this had to be one amazing script to lure Kristen Stewart (who was pitch-perfect in David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future) to star in another vampire movie after trying so hard to distance herself from Twilight. Plus, if you mostly know Oscar Isaac from the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, you’ll be quite impressed with his range and intensity. Flesh of the Gods starts shooting later this year, and like its glamorous vampires, I simply can’t wait to take a bite.