Antlers (2021)

Directed by Scott Cooper

My memory isn’t quite what it used to be, but I’m pretty sure I saw a trailer for this Indigenous folklore themed horror film before the pandemic and was looking forward to it. Smash cut to one apocalypse later and it finally came out, arriving strangely at the end of October rather than in the middle (I guess they really didn’t want to compete with Halloween Kills) ready to try to satisfy my need for folk horror. I was stoked for Antlers, it’s based around the story of the Wendigo which is super cool, its setting of the poor rural Pacific Northwest is unique, and it even has the always delightful Guillermo Del Toro producing. With all that said, it’s really disappointing that Antlers is just okay.

To briefly describe the story, a teacher in a small town in Oregon investigates what’s going on with a disturbed student of hers, finding that the boy is involved in a weird situation with some type of spirit. This narrative winds up going a lot of different places and touching on a lot of different ideas, probably because this was based on a novel that would have had more time to flesh these ideas out, but there isn’t enough time spent on any individual concept, so Antlers reads more like a watery soup of social problems than a sharp satire of rural culture. The big problem here is that Antlers is built very much as an artistic satirical horror film; the atmosphere is oppressive, the pacing is methodical, the plot takes itself incredibly seriously and touches on topics like addiction, child abuse, the problems of rural policing, poverty, environmental destruction. None of those things are bad, but when the plot is aimless, the characters are dull, the dialogue is screenwriting 101, seriously someone says “There has to be a rational explanation for all this!” *gags*, then all the posturing and good intentions can’t make the movie interesting. I don’t hate Antlers but it didn’t really do anything for me, which is a shame because the visuals were pretty decent and the actor who plays the disturbed student is surprisingly good. I’d say give this one a pass, if you’re in the mood for folk horror that’s got shades of fantasy maybe go for Pan’s Labyrinth instead or Midsommar.