The Destroyer trailer focuses on Nicole Kidman's excellent and dark acting skills. The film has already screened at Telluride and Toronto, and Nicole Kidman, who is nearly unrecognizable, has been getting high praise for her performance. Some critics even declare it to be Kidman's finest hour as an actress, which should tell you what you need to know about Destroyer. The movie will screen at the AFI festival next month before hitting theaters in December.

Destroyer follows the moral and existential journey of LAPD detective Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman). As a young police officer, she was placed undercover with a gang in the California desert, which ended in tragedy. Now, the leader of that gang has made a comeback, and Bell is thrown back into her past as she hunts through the remaining members of the gang to get to the top. As seen in the trailer, this will not be as easy as it sounds, and it will put Bell face to face with the demons that destroyed her past.

Destroyer was directed by Karyn Kusama from a script that Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi wrote. The trailer shows off two timelines, one of the younger Erin Bell in the desert with the gang, and then later, after everything went down with her daughter, as she says, "I just want to do one good thing." Nicole Kidman's Bell character has been through a lot, and the trailer is barely scratching the surface, even as it shows her falling back into the familiar territory of revisiting her dark and bloody past.

In a recent interview, Nicole Kidman was asked what drew her to Destroyer. She said, "I was interested in doing the kind of film that's usually centered around a man," and then mentioned the 70s-era noir crime thrillers, specifically. The role is definitely a left turn from what we've seen the actress doing lately, and almost looks like a feature-length take on HBO's True Detective in the way that it's shot. Kidman wore prosthetics that change her nose and bone structure in the film to fully embrace the character and the cards that have been dealt to her.

Nicole Kidman doesn't think that her appearance in Destroyer should be the main focus. If that's the case, "then I didn't do my job properly," she says. In the end, the actress reveals that she has to push through all of the physical aspects of her character to get down to what makes them tick. Whatever the case may be, the film looks excellent. Destroyer hits theaters on December 25th, and in addition to Nicole Kidman, the movie also stars Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, Bradley Whitford, Jade Pettyjohn, and Scoot McNairy. While we wait for the Christmas release date, you can watch the dark and gritty trailer below, thanks to the Annapurna YouTube channel.