In the first act of writer-director Alex Garland’s new film, Civil War, there is a message that seems to be from Garland himself to the people of America. War photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) sits with Joel (Wagner Moura) watching the orange light show of warfare against the night sky. She explains that when she would be in other countries covering wars and turmoil, the message she was always sending home was “Don’t do this.” It’s a scene that is perhaps a little too on-the-nose, but one that Garland felt important enough to drive home. Civil War continues Garland’s knack for bringing the unimaginable into a believable reality with a cautionary tale about a future United States that is violently divided. It is a gripping, terrifying, white-knuckle journey into a future that is easily one of the scariest films of the year if not one of the most important. Dismiss this as fantasy, science-fiction, or whatever you want to call it to allow you some sleep at night. But this one hits hard.

The film opens with turmoil in New York City. Lee is covering another spat of unrest when she meets aspiring war journalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Later that night, Lee sits in a hotel lounge with Joel and veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Lee and Joel believe that the forces in Washington D.C. that are defending their tenuous grip on power are about to be overthrown and the two want to interview the President (Nick Offerman) at this crucial moment. This would mean going beyond the relatively safe confines of New York and venturing through 857 miles of shattered United States to reach their subject. As yet another inconvenient power outage hits the posh hotel and stalls Lee’s upload, Sammy asks if he can join them on their journey. The next morning young Jessie is eager to join them on their road trip through hell and off they go.

The four snake through backroads from New York City to D.C. and come face to face with the various fragments of a shattered America. All the while, Lee takes petulant Jessie under her wing as they creep closer and closer to the center of the conflict. Garland maintains his integrity, but he can’t help but tell a sort of “Mother Knows Best” story with Lee mentoring Jessie through the dangers of their chosen profession. Meanwhile, hotshot reporter Joel can’t help but be a bit too cavalier and the lumbering Sammy plays the sympathetic albatross. Minor notes, all of them. It is clear that Garland had a much more important thesis on his mind than how to trick the audience into falling for the characters.

Garland’s Civil War wasn’t what I expected. The film is good. Very good. but there is a strong focus on characters and individuals for the first half of the film that is disarming. Technically speaking, Civil War is sure to knab a few sound nominations, maybe even a nod for original screenplay, though horror is rarely afforded that respect. The performances are all interesting with rising character actor Henderson stealing every scene he is in.

When Americans think of “Civil War,” they think of a distant past divided by blue and grey, that careens to an inevitable resolution. Garland’s Civil War brings conflict to a not-so-distant future that is at once familiar and disturbing. “United” States is a thing of the past with five factions of the country fighting one another for control. My initial complaint with the film was that we didn’t get to see how things got to the point they were at the beginning of the film. What Garland might be saying is that we don’t need to know what happens to get us there. We are living it now.

8 Out of 10