One of the more interesting end credits of Lars Von Trier’s audacious ANTICHRIST (alongside the first-in-cinema-history listing of “misogyny researcher”) is that of “horror film research”. This suggests what is already apparent from what has gone before – that this is a horror movie made by an auteur who either doesn’t much like the genre or is using it to experiment, indulge and shock. Consequently, it’s a like-it-or-loath-it affair, though, in truth, the same can be said for the rest of Von Trier’s back catalogue, and any previous forays into art house horror.
Separated into significant chapter headings of “Grief”, “Pain”, “Despair” and “The Three Beggars”, the movie is virtually a two hander : there are no speaking roles for anyone bar the two leads, and, save for some ghostly faceless extras at the very end, the only other character on-screen is the child who perishes in the prologue. The camera is usually hand-held, the takes are extended, sometimes painfully so, and much of the first hour is talky to the point of theatrical.
Clearly, it’s not a movie for your average genre audience, or your average audience full stop. Those with patience and the ability to overlook Von Trier’s pretentiousness will be rewarded to some degree by a genuinely unsettling cinematic experience. It’s strong on foreboding mood : the soundtrack alone has been contrived to unnerve with its relentlessly falling acorns and off-camera screaming infants. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who shot 28 DAYS LATER, delivers some astonishing imagery, including the extraordinary visuals of the monochrome prologue and epilogue.
Its calculated surrealism – notably a disemboweled talking fox who portentously warns “Chaos reigns” – and unerring sense of dread (along with the use of decaying nature imagery) immediately recall the darkest of David Lynch’s ventures, though the influences run further. DON’T LOOK NOW would appear to be a prominent source of inspiration, as would THE SHINING and MISERY (a demented woman overpowering and crippling a male).
However you feel about the movie as a whole, there’s no denying the power of its opening sequence, a prologue that’s as haunting and devastating as it is visually and aurally beautiful. Characters known only as He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) make love – with brief hardcore penetration shots performed by doubles – just as their playful, inquisitive young son falls to his death from his bedroom window. Gainsbourg promptly falls apart and therapist Dafoe becomes more of a shrink than a husband in the process of trying to reach her. Her encroaching madness is dominated by hallucinations and an obsession with her own thesis – a study of the maltreatment of women in the 16th century, chiefly witchcraft. Taking refuge in “Eden”, a cabin in a remote forest, the couple descend into violence.
Deliberately paced and arguably self-satisfied, this movie is also beguiling and virtually hypnotic. It is driven by two remarkably committed star turns : Dafoe (surprisingly muted and sensitive) has the lower-key, reactive role, ultimately having to play victim AND aggressor. It’s Gainsbourg who bears her soul and everything else in a wrenching, exhausting portrayal of the physical and mental impact of grief. You will feel drained just watching her in any given scene.
The film’s art house horror pretensions can’t hide the fact that its now infamous denouement takes it into another variant of the post-SAW torture movie cycle. This final reel, however, is still jaw-dropping stuff, with some of the most extreme film imagery to ever make it into UK cinemas : Dafoe’s erect cock ejaculates blood (shades of NEKROMANTIK!), Gainsbourg screws a barbell excruciatingly to his leg and, most unforgettably, she bloodily snips off her own clitoris in horrific close-up just to prove a point. Needless to say, the latter moment would never, ever, have survived intact from the British censor board had this been a non-arty low budget American horror flick.
ANTICHRIST is a bleak (Von Trier says satirical) study of human nature’s weaknesses, rich with the blackest of irony as it becomes clear that Gainsbourg has contrived to get her husband to kill her to make her another victim of the male violence she has studied. Consider the film a cautious recommend – love it or loathe it, you won’t easily forget it.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
