Antlers (2021) After barely tolerating that cynical, crapfest geekshow "Halloween Kills" yesterday, we'd no plans to post on yet another horror movie the very next day.....
\ But then this darkest-of-dark, grisly little beauty crossed our path and......ah, what the hell.
We're not sorry, though. For a radical change of pace, this one's the real deal. And then some.
Honestly scary. Scenes and images that still stayed with us in their nightmarish conception.
(When we saw Guillermo del Toro's name listed as one of the producers, we knew at once this wouldn't be some big studio cheeseball time waster.....this guy takes his horror seriously....)
And like the best of horror, the film takes a deep dive into the everyday modern horrors that surround us......which connects in all sorts of ways to the film's supernatural Big Bad.
For a relatively modest creature feature, "Antlers" takes on a host of corrosive issues to deepen its overwhelming sense of doom and dread.......the country's economic agonies of disappearing jobs and unemployment, the drug addiction epidemic, the destruction of the enviroment and the permanent psychic scars left by physical and sexual abuse.
That's a lot of stuff piled up on the film's plate, but it always stays true to its main purpose......to scare the living crap out of you and leave you with a few lingering bad dreams
Julia (Keri Russell), is a middle school teacher who returns to her little rural Oregon town and moves back into her family home with her brother Paul (Jesse Plemons) now the town sheriff. The town's dying from the closure of its mines, which some residents use for meth labs. And Julia herself still battles the temptation of alcoholism, the aftermath of the terrible abuse she and Paul suffered at the hands of their late father.
In the midst of this toxic atmosphere, one of Julia's students, Lucas, (Jeremy T. Thomas) a sad, haunted wraith of a child, lives a horrific home life - feeding freshly killed animals to his now zombie-like father and little brother who've been possessed by a Wendigo, a monstrous spirit from Native American mythology.
When Lucas's father fully transforms into the creature's full rampaging, antlered true self, the film doesn't shy away from delivering the carnage and gore that today horror fans expect. But to its great credit (and what the horror hounds may not have expected), the film deals seriously with the terrible cost of lives lost and lives forever damaged.
For us, that lifts "Antlers" out of the usual morass of horror movies that flood the Walmart shelves and streaming sites every single week. So anyone who'd like a little cinematic quality in their scares, you should check this one out ASAP......3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
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