Antlers: An Effectively Atmospheric, Drama-Heavy Folk Horror
Scott Cooper makes his first foray into horror with the slow-burning creature feature Antlers. It’s effectively atmospheric and delivers a few genre thrills, but it doesn’t quite connect all its pieces in a way that fully satiates.
In an isolated Oregon town, a teacher (Keri Russell) and her brother (Jesse Plemons), the local sheriff, discover that a young student (Jeremy T. Thomas) is harboring a dangerous secret with frightening consequences.
Antlers begins with an incredibly strong cold open that sets up the folkloric horrors that follow. We’re introduced to Lucas (played by Jeremy T. Thomas in his feature film debut), a sweet, yet strange kid from a broken home and a withering town, as he waits outside of a defunct mine his father is “working” in. Unbeknownst to Lucas, his father is cooking up meth deep in the bowels of the old mine, and when he returns to his junkie chemist partner, they’re confronted by a mysterious creature who sets upon them in the pitch-black darkness. As their screams and gunshots carom out of the mouth of the mine, Lucas calls out to his dad and slowly enters into the darkness.
The cloudy, fog-torn Northwest landscapes are instant eye candy, and the foreboding atmosphere is palpably communicated through the ominous glide and unsettling creep of Cooper’s controlled camera moves, but the vigorous intrigue of the film’s opening is reset by a jerky and graceless flash-forward to three weeks later. We’re introduced to Julia (Kerri Russell), a teacher with a dark past, and her brother, Paul (Jesse Plemons), the town sheriff. Abused as a child by her now deceased father, Julia’s deep-seated trauma is reopened by her return home, both to her hometown and her childhood home where she currently lives with Paul. Her rough past causes her to recognize distress in one of her students, Lucas, who’s been harboring a strange and dark secret since the events of the opening.
What follows is a wonkily plotted slow burn that builds intrigue and frustration in pretty equal measure. It’s a strange blend of indigenous mythology and modern American plights that never fully congeals into something altogether cohesive or coherent. For awhile the film’s strangeness is compelling, but it reaches a point where it becomes so needlessly bogged down by drama that it overshadows the horror elements almost entirely. To make matters worse, it’s also one of those films that feels the need to communicate its intent and what its about directly. Once it shows its hand in a shameful scene that reduces its Native American influence to a major exposition dump, any remaining mystique pretty much goes right out the window.
There’s a little too much going on with the story, and while it ambitiously wrestles with some important themes, like abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and environmentalism, none of it really hits with much force or resonance. For a film that centers itself around storytelling, you’d expect a bit more artistry there, but what the film lacks in the story department, it makes up for in creature design and atmospheric dread. Cooper smartly keeps the monster hidden, and he continuously teases us for the big reveal. He leaves things largely to our imagination, relying on sound design and character reactions to do the heavy lifting, before he finally shows his hand, and for the most, he delivers. The design of the creature is cool, but the manner in which our events come to a head isn’t as satisfying as one would hope.
Antlers kind of stumbles over the finish line, but its well cultivated atmosphere, strong performances, and cool creature design help to alleviate some of the frustration brought on by its murky mythology and messy story. It’s hard to say what it’s really trying to communicate in the end, but it seems to be a film about abuse — of body, of youth, and of Earth — but the metaphors Cooper creates don’t fully track. It plays with some interesting ideas, but Antlers is ultimately a film that never quite reach its full potential. What you get is a decent creature feature that bites off way more than it can realistically chew.
Recommendation: Antlers is well made, but a bit too self-serious and messy (in a bad way) to fully deliver. It’s a decent enough creature feature, but it’s likely to leave you only partially satisfied. If interested, you can check out the film in theaters Friday, October 29th.
Rating: 3 disturbing drawings outta 5.
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