Review: ANTLERS

Twelve year old Lucas all but witnesses his father attacked by a wild animal in an abandoned mine. His teacher doesn't know this but picks up symptoms of abuse in the violent fairy tale Lucas presents as homework. It sounds less like a kid's story than a screen memory. A victim of her father's monstrous dominance she bristles and worries until she follows him from school one afternoon and, over a shouted ice cream learns the strange order the boy has made of his home life. We've already seen that there is a monster in the basement. Soon we are seeing Teacher Julia voice her concerns to her brother (town sherriff) and the school principal to little effect and we also see her fight her own stress by saying no to the alcohol at the local grocer. 

A few loaded guns right there and all this movie had to do was discharge them in act three as Uncle Anton commanded. But this Del Toro production of Scott Cooper's film (of Nick Antosca's story in the court of King Caracticus) has other plans. On the surface of it Antlers is the Stephen King style tale of a lonely outlier boy, bullied by a thickhead for his difference while monsters who might just bet on Lucas in a fight are roaming the Oregonian woods. We get the generic classroom lesson that makes the theme plain early on and we are apprised of how folklore however fantastic, has its origins in human misdeeds. 

Ok, all is well in horror movie land but Scott Cooper wants us to feel some of the humanity of the people he pushes into the room with us. Julia's PTSD is triggered but her strength is keeping it at bay for long enough to see it in reason. She knows she's one of the lucky ones as her brother Paul intimates later. Lucas is a believable twelve year old, meeting his extraordinary situation with a blend of fear and wonder, not entirely sure what he should be feeling at points of stress. And then you get the monster and the monster is not just a thing from the woods but has an origin and it's none too wholesome. A welling dread builds in the cold and dripping forests and mossy old houses and we know that when the action happens we will need to know that our tongues are tucked away form our incisors.

The very best horror is heavily flavoured with tragedy or at least sadness which can serve to stretch the violence and the mayhem into often unbearable extents. The mother/daughter bond is horribly racked in Dark Water. Even in 1941's The Wolf Man with its reluctant monster touches with melancholy. This is where Del Toro's influence is clearly felt. This is not to take away from Scott Cooper for fashioning a modern folkoric nightmare for these times of folklore in the breath of everyone outside. I put that bit in because I'm just back from seeing this at a morning session at Hoyts in Melbourne, the first real cinema screening since Supernova in April. It felt so calming and relieving being in a beautiful big movie palace with a massive screen and immersive sound. It's a testament to this film that my relaxation was shortlived. Perhaps it was this sense of relieving normality that influenced me away from some quite harsh review of this one but, dammit, I enjoyed it.