Antlers - Movie Review
What do you get when the Grandaddy of the Creepy Pasta Movement, Nick Antosca writes a script that gets produced by legendary creature feature director / all around good guy, Guillermo Del Toro?
A brilliant if not incomplete feature that could have been one of the all-time greats.
Let’s discuss.
Antlers is a 2020 slow burn psychological thriller / creature feature brought to us by writer / legend Nick Antosca and director Scott Cooper Annnnnnd in case you missed any of the marketing, Guillermo Del Toro is in the building. I feel like the studio was really banking on Del Toro’s star power to propel this film into the stratosphere, but in that lays the problem. Del Toro’s “star power” failed to propel any of his projects into the stratosphere. I’m not saying that as a slight to the director, as he is one of my favorite humans walking around today, but let’s be honest… He’s a fringe genre director. Yes, he has an Oscar for his brilliant fish-sex reimagining of The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Shape of Water. But look at the ticket sales for that film and the previous few. Nightmare Alley, Crimson Peak, and the 2020 remake of The Witches all bombed. The last successful project that used his name in the tagline was Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark which quadrupled it’s budget due to the millions of adults who grew up being terrified by Stephen Gammel’s artistic genius. The success of that film had little to do with Guillermo’s name power and much more to do with a nostalgia boom. That’s why it just blows my mind that the film’s marketing was so focused on pushing this film to Del Toro’s audience of fantasy lovers.
Why?
Because this is a hardcore, brutal horror film with themes of molestation, addiction, and the lingering effects of child abuse. It’s not a film that fans of Trolls: Tales of Arcadia are going to enjoy.
Why didn’t they focus more on the film being written by Candle Cove scribe and creator of my favorite television series of all time, Channel Zero, Nick Antosca’s involvement. Antosca is an internet legend. He was one of the first creepy pasta writers who’s work went viral. Not only did it go viral, he got to adapt it into a big budget show on SyFy. That show was so beloved that when it was cancelled, Netflix immediately pulled him in to do a series called Brand New Cherry Flavor. To millennial horror fans, he’s a living legend. Yet, in most of the marketing his name is down int he small print.
Or of course, they could have focused more on Scott Cooper, who in his short career has made nothing but heart wrenching tales of Americana. From Crazy Heart to Hostiles, Cooper has redifined American storytelling with grit and brutality fitting our nations history. He’s an unflinching director and his first foray into big budget horror would also have been a proper good story.
But nah, we got the dude who made the Hellboy movies which were nothing like the source material.
No, not Neil Marshall, his Helloby doesn’t exist.
Oh, the movie?
Yeah Yeah, I almost forgot.
The film centers on a school teacher named Julia Meadows, played by Keri Russell. She’s haunted by the abuses her father performed, abuses so horrendous that it’s almost impossible for her to verbalize. She struggled every day to not crawl back into the bottle that she called home until her life came apart, forcing her to return to her home town. There is little about the place she even recognizes. Meth has taken over small town America and few regions have been hit as hard as the Pacific Northwest. Between the town’s decay and the fact that she’s living in the house where she was abused, she is desperate for something, anything to distract her from her own memories. So, when one of her students begins displaying antisocial tendencies and comes to school dirty and bruised, she immediately hones in on his situation. What she doesn’t know is the boy’s abuse is far darker than anyone could know. A darkness is brewing in the heart of the town and only the quiet boy knows the truth. Cannibilized bodies are being found, more people are going missing, and few if anyone knows how to stop it. Will Julia find a way to fight back the darkness or will she be consumed? Find out in Antlers.
This film is beautifully shot. The way the film incorporates a visual comparison of the beautiful simplicity of nature to the gross human sprawl is fantastic visual storytelling. I love how the filmmakers weave sweeping dramatic vistas and gutters filled with trash into the same tracking shots. You can see how we’ve ruined what once was perfect.
I love the use of modern vice and consumerism as the equivalent to the cannibalism that inspired the myth. It almost feels like justification for the horror to come.
I will warn you, this film in unflinching in its violence. While most films would cut away, the camera here stays focused. Scenes go on longer than you expect, which ramps up the creep factor. This is not a big jump scare feature. It’s a dark, atmospheric slow burn. There isn’t a lot of exposition either about the past or the present. We never know for sure what happened to Julia and her brother in the dark days of their childhood. We don’t know how much the town knew about it or if they did anything to stop it. There are implications, winks, nods, but much like in real life there’s no definitive answer unless you were personally involved. The gut wrenching reality teams with unrelenting horror combines into a unique beast.
Does it work?
Yes. Mostly due to incredible casting.
Let’s run it down.
Keri Russell is a powerhouse. Having been a victim of violence and addiction myself, I can say that films often get the aftermath wrong. Yes, many people crumbled under the memory of trauma and many people succumb to their addictions as a result, but not all of them. Many go on to be strong, if not forever melancholy. Russell plays the role of survivor with a true to life intensity. While most films would take this survivor girl and make her a badass or a puritan. This film depicts the reality of being forever broken. There’s an amazing scene where her boss tells her that they aren’t qualified to diagnose signs of abuse and Russell’s retort is that she is someone more than experienced in being abused to see the signs. It’s a sobering moment and the reaction by storied character actress Amy Madigan is so organic and painful that it pulls your heart to the floor.
I can’t go any further without mentioning Graham Greene.
You don’t recognize the name, right?
Don’t worry, you’d recognize his face. He’s probably the most prolific Indigenous actor in North American film history. He’s also one of the most talented character actors period. The Green Mile, Dances with Wolves, Northern Exposure… over 171 credits to his name. He is a character actor in rare air. Known for powerful, understated performances, he brings his best to Antlers.
Then there’s Rory Cochrane, the most underrated cast member from Dazed and Confused. Need proof? Watch his incredible performance in Oculus.
Even the child actors play their roles with an intensity that belies their ages. Both Jeremy T. Thomas and Sawyer Jones feel like real children burdened with the harsh realities of the world.
So we’ve got fantastic cinematography, solid world building, and an incredible ensemble cast—this movie should be incredible right?
Lock yourselves in my brothers, sisters, and non-binaries as we enter…
The SPOILER ZONE.
Seriously, look away.
Alright, I warned you.
The first two thirds of this film is on the level of Silence of the Lambs and I don’t say that lightly. Silence of the Lambs, in my mind, is a perfect film. It has no flaws. The script, acting, camera work, and overall execution are beyond most every other film. Antlers was on that level for an hour, but the filmmakers dropped the ball in the last fifteen minutes.
Why?
Fuck if I know. It’s mind boggling seeing as the first part of the film is a tense, guttural roar of an opening. With the monster revealed and the hero marching towards certain death, the film loses it’s stakes. I feel like the original ending to the story was much nastier, but was softened for release. I may be wrong, but to me the story only had one end in sight—sacrifice. I pictured Julia fighting the Wendigo and being forced to kill both children. Then, having been the only vessel available to it, became possessed. Though, due to her impressive willpower developed and emphasized through her hard fought sobriety throughout the film, exiled herself deep into the mine to protect the town.
Unfortunately, I’m guessing test audiences didn’t agree and instead we get Julia fighting the impressively designed Wendigo and easily defeating it. She does kill the young child, but there’s no consequences for her. At no point in the final battle did I feel tense or excited. This climactic confrontation felt more like a forgone conclusion. There was no excitement for me or my viewing partners.
And then there’s the denoumount which nearly ruins the entire film, because thanks to Sinister, every film needs a Bughuul ending.
The film reveals that Julia’s brother, Paul, is infected by the Wendigo.
Paul, the long suffering brother who wasn’t able to escape their father’s abuses and went on to be one of the few good people in the town. A man who sacrificed his own personal and professional ambitions to become the town sheriff because no one else could stomach the job. A character so likable he’s played by Mr. Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons…
It pissed me off.
It makes 0 sense based on the build of his character. It makes less sense considering he was badly wounded by the Wendigo and would have been an unsuitable host based on what we’d been told in the film. The creature seemed to only infect whole, seemingly intact bodies.
I just don’t get it. I feel like there’s a missing piece.
This movie could have been a tentpole for Horror quality, but thanks to this ending it will just be another halloween bargain bin filler.
That sounds like hyperbole, but most of the people I’ve talked to about the film, people who haven’t seen it, bring up that they heard the ending sucks.
When word of mouth spreads outside of genre fans that your ending is shit, that’s a huge failure.
Should you watch it?
Absolutely. Even with the shit conclusion, this film is better than most horror productions out there.
The special effects are incredibly true to life and stomach churning.
Antlers is currently streaming free on HBO MAX.
