There are countless ways a film can go wrong, but when it comes to horror, the list seems to somehow expand beyond infinity. Horror lives or dies on manipulating one of the most subjective emotional experiences that make up the human condition, and sometimes telling a story conflicts with that.
Antlers is a horror film directed by Scott Cooper, best known for 2015's Black Mass or 2017's Hostiles, and written by C. Henry Chaisson and Nick Antosca. It's an adaptation of a short story Antosca wrote in 2019. Antosca was also showrunner and co-creator of the underrated horror series Channel Zero. The big name on the poster, however, was producer Guillermo del Toro who brings a slight touch of his particular style.
The plot of the film is fairly simple. An elementary school teacher notices one of her students acting unusually and seeks to help him, only to discover that the boy is harboring a dangerous creature. It's first and foremost about abuse and addiction, but the world that surrounds the story tells its own story. Antlers is set in Cispus Falls, Oregon, a tiny industrial town that used to be a beautiful forest. The town is blanketed by thick woods that often set the scene for the horrific events, but the landscape is a simple but solid metaphor that inhabits the narrative. Watching the film gives the viewer a full tour of Cispus Falls, from the shoreline to the railroad and characters make a point of talking up what it used to be. Older characters seem to remember that the area was something special sometime in the past. This reality of things getting worse over time mirrors the gradual downward shift of the characters. Some spoilers for Antlers follow.
Antlers is about a boy who must take care of his father and younger brother, both of whom have transformed into something horrific and only seem to be getting worse. Lucas Weaver is a twelve-year-old kid who is quiet, struggles in school, and gets into fights with bullies. His teacher Julia Meadows notices the obvious yet harrowing signs and worries that he's a victim of abuse. She has her own difficult past with an abusive parent which leads her to passionately pursue the truth of Lucas' life. The film depicts Lucas killing small animals and collecting roadkill off the street. Gradually, the film reveals that his little brother and father are only partially alive. They're something akin to zombies, but Lucas's brother is still sentient enough to cry for help. Lucas's life is miserable, only able to experience calm at school, and his teacher takes a special interest as she tries to help.
The film is pretty slow, but it picks up in a hurry in its third act. At a tight 99 minutes, it doesn't drag at all. It chooses to spend a great deal of time hiding the worse aspects of the story and playing with Lucas's obvious problems. Lucas spends a lot of time walking alone, and the scenery is deeply unpleasant. The film as a whole looks nightmarish, before, during, and after it gets to the big monster reveals. Lucas's father comes down with his particular condition while working overtime in a meth lab which he runs out of an old mine. It's a slightly layered metaphor, surely an abandoned mine is just a hole in the ground, but mankind made it a point to abuse the area twice. It's there that the curse that makes up the film's horrors begins.
The monster of the film is where its biggest problems lie for a number of reasons. Turns out, Lucas's father and brother have been afflicted with a curse that is slowly turning them into Wendigo. The Wendigo is a creature of First Nation's mythology, commonly believed in by groups of Algonquin-speaking peoples. It's shockingly common as a movie or video game monster, from Until Dawn toHannibal, which is unfortunate. Using an Indigenous culture's historical beliefs as a monster in a work constructed by modern culture is generally a bad idea, here included. The monster is a mix of multiple cultures' conceptions of the creature. It is explained in the film by Warren Stokes, the one Native American character who has very few lines outside that scene. It begs the question of why they would cast Graham Greene, a celebrated Indigenous Canadian actor, in such a minor role. This aspect of the film received a great deal of well-earned criticism.
The film intends to make its connection to the Native American myth it cribs from part of the nature versus industry narrative. Stokes is the only person who knows what is going on when the killing starts. The meth lab that starts the plot's issues is full of old hanging symbols which once protected the area from spirits. The colonizer's disrespect for the natives, just like their disrespect for nature, is the direct cause of the monster's creation. Though it's a little misguided and problematic, there's a lot of interesting detail in Antlers that make the film worth looking into. The film is available now on HBO Max.