Antlers Review (Film, 2021)
content warning: blood, gore, sexual violence, bullying, child abuse, homophobia, violence against women, flashing lights
Editorial note: Antlers is a horror film about child abuse. This includes discussions of sexual assault, physical violence, and child endangerment. While you never see anything happen to a child performer in the film, the subject is clear. Also, the third act is largely lit with flashing police lights, which can be disorienting. Some theaters have put up a flashing light warning. Be safe if you choose to watch.
Antlers is a new horror/drama film about child abuse. Let’s not bury the lead here. The film opens with a disturbing sequence where a father is cooking meth in an abandoned mine while one of his children sits outside. Things go bad, flash forward three weeks, and his other child is now essentially living at home alone. His father and brother are locked in the attic because they’re sick and can only safely eat raw flesh. Meanwhile, a new teacher at the school, herself a victim of child abuse, realizes this boy needs help and neither the school nor the police are willing to take her seriously.
Take out the monster transformations and you have a hard-hitting indie drama that would clean house at the Indie Spirit Awards. Layer in the monster transformations and you have one of the most complex horror films to come out in a long time.
The monster as a metaphor is the backbone of the monster movie at this point. Even narratives about a monster representing abuse are pretty standard. Antlers draws parallels between an adult survivor of domestic abuse and a child facing abuse from a literal monster. This is a simplification of the dynamic, but it’s the base layer of the narrative. The teacher can tell something is wrong because she lived through the same experience, but the child doesn’t really think anything is wrong because the monster is still his dad and would never intentionally hurt him.
Antlers handles this in a clever way. Some of the signs are obvious. The young boy is always lethargic, with dark circles under his eyes and dirty or ripped clothing. He’s smaller than the other kids in his middle school class and doesn’t like to speak up. The teacher finds his illustrations of his family—two monsters transforming over time—and believes this is imagination as a cry for help.
In reality, this child is a surprisingly gifted artist at capturing what he literally sees every night in his house. You’ll always see his drawing before you next see his father and brother and these are spot on representations of the transformation from human to monster. Some of the most intense sequences in the film happen because you get a glimpse of what his family has become long before you get to see what they look like now. That reveal is incredible.
The creature design is some of the best to come around in years. A lot is the physical performance of Scott Haze, twisting his body and crawling throughout the darkened attic on the rare occasion the door is unlocked. This is enhanced by excellent makeup, prosthetics, and skillful use of CGI when the transformation goes beyond the limits of human anatomy. The victims of the monster’s attacks and the action sequences are equally impressive. This monster is something never before seen on film like this and it’s terrifying and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Keri Russell, as the teacher, and Jeremy T. Thomas, as the boy, are a dynamic pair onscreen. They don’t get many moments to directly interact with each other, but the narrative is built on how they build a relationship through distant eye contact in a classroom. Their solo moments are most of the screentime, but they share the same role in parallel stories. They are doing what they can to protect outcasts in the environment they have control over. The teacher is doing everything in her power to protect the student, and the student is doing everything in his power to protect his sick family. It’s incredibly tragic and you know there’s no way this film will be tied together with a happily ever after.
There is a big, missed opportunity in Antlers and it comes down to the source material itself. The monster of Antlers is the wendigo. This is a creature featured in a lot of First Nations’ folklore. The one indigenous actor in the film, Graham Greene, is only given the most stereotypical role for a First Nations character in horror stories. He is the walking encyclopedia of his culture, existing only to tell the white people in the town what a few objects are before telling them about the wendigo. There is no good reason why a film that relies so heavily on the Wendigo story does not have a more diverse cast. The horror elements would make a lot more sense if the cast actually reflected the culture being used for the scares.
Antlers is still a good horror/drama. It is a challenging film that doesn’t shy away from difficult subject matter. It looks great onscreen and has a clear voice.
Antlers is playing in theaters.