‘Antlers’ Review: Scott Cooper’s Sharp Horror was Worth the Wait
The long-awaited horror film from is seriously deadly and deadly serious.
The most dangerous and deadly animal in America is the deer. In a constantly evolving world, one with just a lot of stuff happening, few fun-factoids have the type of staying power like the old deer tidbit from drivers ed. Whether it’s a spiritual appreciation for the animal, the urge to hang one up above a fireplace, or the fear of becoming a victim on its kill list, there is a very real American fixation with deer; it’s a twisted, overly-serious obsession with of the horned animal that serves as the central terror Scott Cooper’s widely anticipated “Antlers”.
After about a year and a half of patiently marinating, Antlers trotted its way out of the freezer and into the guts of brave audiences. Based on “The Quiet Boy”, a short story by Nick Antosca, creator of “Channel Zero”, the film carries a similar sense of dread; dread, a word that may be Antlers distilled into a single eerie feeling. The story follows resident quiet boy, Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas), a Podunk elementary schooler forced to take care of his father and brother after they become ill. And of course, in standard horror movie fashion, their illness isn’t just your grandma’s flu. Lucas’ struggle runs in tandem with his teacher at school, Julia (Keri Russell), who, similar to her student, is living a shattered life at home with her brother, Paul (Jesse Plemons). It’s when their lives intersect that antlers start intersecting with human bodies, and the population of their small town is set on a doomed path.
The wet, dewy world of Antlers is a gloomy wonderland for the characters to play in, and wonderfully enough, there is a sense of community exuding from the movie’s setting. Even the side characters find ways to meaningfully involve themselves within the narrative-- something that can’t be said for many films. Russell is quite sharp in her portrayal of Julia, giving a layered performance of a broken confidence. Plemons, as always, is a quiet contender in the film, playing a character he has performed many times over; a ‘gaslighter-with-a-heart-of-gold’. The children in the film, non-actors who had never seen a camera before, according to Cooper, are especially powerful in their roles, whether it be by accident or not. Craftwise, Cooper has made a film that is somewhat untouchable.
At the heart of Antlers lies its intention. The film is thematically rich, touching upon class dynamics, the opioid epidemic, and family trauma. Combine all these with the indigenous folklore in the center of the film, the pièce de résistance holding the bloody strings of the film, the Wendigo, a deer-like cannibalistic entity, and you’ve got yourself the ingredients for some monstrous mayhem. And with Guillermo Del Toro as a producer on the film, even introducing the movie at its BeyondFest world premiere, Antlers was always going to be a monstrous undertaking.
The design of the monsters are intricate and nightmare-inducing. Antlers is a film unafraid to restrict its demons until pinnacle moments. In many cases where the full Wendigo isn’t shown, it feels like it wants to escape the frame, to be unrestricted. Through the course of the film, encounters with the creature happen piece-wise, a tactical move by Cooper to ensure that when we do see the being as a whole, the horror lives up to the hype.
The gruesomeness of the kills is jarring and unsettling not only because of the effects artists and make-up team’s craftsmanship, but also a well crafted script that engages us with its world well before any violence starts. And when it comes to who its victims are, Scott Cooper’s Wendigo doesn’t discriminate. Anyone is up for grabs, no matter how innocent, cop-affiliated, or young. Alongside the acute sound design, each kill is a spectacle of sight and sound.
If Antlers lacks anything, it might be the sense of wonder that makes monster-centric films so thrilling. Like America’s preoccupation with the antlered animal in question, Cooper too, takes his obsessions deadly seriously. The world of Antlers is often devoid of humor or awe, instead focusing on pain and suffering. There is a certain joy in watching a horror film that may have ended up on the cutting room floor, like Cooper alluded to in his post-premiere Q&A. However, the more dreadful aspects of the film are superbly executed, and not only is each kill effective in its scares, but every sad passing glance and plea for help is heart wrenching. It’s so well done, in fact, that it somewhat makes the self-seriousness of Antlers worth its misery. The combination of masterful drama and joyless terror gives Antlers a flavor that many American audiences aren’t accustomed to but a satisfying, hefty meal nonetheless.