I don't make it to the movies much these days for a variety of reasons, but when I found out Lars von Trier, the Danish bête noir of the film industry, had made a new film, and that this film was called Antichrist, I knew what had to be done. The film is alternately the most entrancing work I've seen by von Trier and at times downright disgusting, but I would call it a success and a much needed dose of Gothic and intra-familial horror in a genre now dominated by dull torture porn.
The film stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a nameless married couple only known as "He" and "She," whose child dies by jumping out of a window while husband and wife are making love in one of the most over-stylized sequences I've ever seen in film. The design of the sequence, dominated by slow-motion and digitized color-editing, is no doubt von Trier playing with his audience, who have come to associate him with the stripped down, Dogme95 aesthetic. The sequence is beautifully edited, with the Italian chamber music soundtrack almost invoking a feeling of ballet, but it does eventually begin to try one's patience. After this opening prologue, the cinematography is more subdued, yet still much more stylized than other von Trier films.
After the death of her son, She is hospitalized when she collapses at her son's funeral, crippled by grief. Feeling his wife is being over-medicated and not allowed to experience her emotions properly, He, a therapist with unconventional methods, decides he is better suited to treat his wife. The two hike to a secluded cabin in the woods named Eden in the hopes of overcoming her maternal guilt.
Once they arrive, the film slowly builds toward its extreme yet ultimately unsatisfying conclusion. He has visions of still-born dear and talking foxes so well crafted that they will linger with you long after you leave the theater. It is during these moments that Antichrist is at its best, as von Trier has the nerve to to take time to use sound and image to build mood, all the while making his audience tear their hair out in anticipation of the horrific climax they know is coming. She continues to be tortured by grief until one day she wakes up feelin' fine, and we know it's all downhill from there. What follows are closeup shots of genital mutilation the Saw films only imply, and while von Trier's desire to shock his "seen-it-all" audience is admirable, it feels oddly superfluous to the film as a whole. These scenes have added to the film's notoriety, but not to the film itself.
The first hour and a half of the film, leading up to the explosion of violence, is masterful. More than anything else it recalls Stanley Kubrick's The Shining with it's slow, brooding terror and its demonstration that the person you share your bed with every night can be a source of dread. However, if von Trier had shown some restraint in the film's final twenty minutes, he would have delivered film that signified the best of the horror genre, but as is Antichrist showcases the best and the worst. Still, that's more than you can expect from the latest Eli Roth camp dreck.
