Review: Antichrist

Lars Von Trier. The name alone is enough to put critics and audiences into a head spin and either reaching for a sick bucket or desperate to heap awards onto the man and his films.

So when it was announced that his new film would be a psychological horror which was filmed while the writer and director was suffering from depression and he didn’t know if he could or would ever finish it, people waited with bated breath for it to arrive. When it finally debuted at Cannes this year, it was greeted with cries of disgust, dismay and anger as well as those saying that it was a new masterpiece from the director of The Idiots to Dogville.

The story is pretty simple. A couple of unnamed characters (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) have sex in their city apartment bedroom as their infant son falls to his death in another room. The mother’s grief sends her into hospital but the father who is a therapist believes he can help her more and they retreat to their own isolated cabin in the woods to try and rebuild their lives. However things go from bad to worse as nature begins to take its course inside and outside the cabin.

Watching and writing about Von Trier’s films is always a challenge as he is a director who always pushes his audiences and is always has a clear message and intention. This means that even the man himself states that he can offer no excuse for the film, but also refers to it as the most important of his entire career your not sure whether to believe or doubt him.

So to the film itself which was infamously passed fully uncut by the BBFC and contains some of the most graphic and disturbing images captured on screen for years.

If viewed purely as a horror film then this is one of the most disturbing made in the last ten years even though its ideas come from The Blair Witch Project, Eraserhead and The Evil Dead. It manages to capture such feelings of deep unease and psychological horror that what you encounter will worry you for weeks afterwards. From talking dead foxes and scenes of torture, to stunningly beautiful images, they have all been astoundingly rendered by cinematographer extraordinaire Anthony Dod Mantle. He is the real creative drive behind the film and his work in the extremely pretentious black and white prologue through to the eerie scenes in chapters one to four fully immerses the audience in the pain, grief and suffering of the two central characters and takes you on the same psychological horrific journey with them.

The central performances are both excellent with Gainsbourg showing she is one of the most underrated actresses working today while Dafoe is as good as ever.

So is this worth seeing for its graphic and visceral violence and explicit sex, or because it is a work of some note? Well that remains for the viewer to decide. I felt it was pretentious and often self-indulgent but as a horror film it was unlike any I have seen for years and for that made it worthwhile. As another art film from Von Trier though it’s not his best but it’s an experience you will never forget.