Movies
A Second Opinion: A New Review for ‘Antichrist’
Arriving later this month from IFC Films is Lars von Trier’s highly anticipated Antichrist, which stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who retreat to an isolated cabin in the woods following the death of their child. While Michael Panduro already chimed in with his positive review, we’ve got another look at the film thanks to Thomas M. Wagner. Chaos Reigns!
Antichrist is a transgressive psychosexual nightmare of such lacerating intensity that it will likely be too much for many audiences to take, even those familiar with Danish wild man Lars von Trier and the fearless way he likes to go over the top and keep going. Von Trier has visited the dark night of the soul many times before, in such despair-laced epics as Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. The latter of those two films was such an ordeal for its star, Icelandic singer Björk, that she gave up acting altogether. One can only imagine what von Trier’s stars in Antichrist, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, had to process, both emotionally and intellectually, to take on the roles they play here. These are not merely brilliant performances, but heroic ones.
If you think you know what the movie is about because of its title, you’re wrong. If you think you’re prepared for it because you’ve seen everything else von Trier has done, you’re wrong. If you’ve read the reports from Cannes about horrified viewers fleeing the screening like startled rabbits, particularly during that one scene where She gets out the scissors, and you think this gives you a good idea of what to expect, you’re wrong. There’s far more than meets the eye here, right down to the movie’s enigmatic and thought-provoking final shot, and it’s only after a great deal of reflection that you can begin to get a grip on what you’ve seen and what it all means. Having thought about it intensely (it’s impossible to do anything but think about Antichrist for several hours after you see it), I think I have a good idea. Maybe I’m wrong. All I can tell you for sure is that this movie takes a lot out of you.
The story details one couple’s descent into hell, after a tragic accident kills their infant son. The accident makes up the film’s prologue, a masterful sequence shot in black and white with a hypnotic beauty that visually evokes such early von Trier movies as Europa and The Element of Crime. We know the boy’s name — Nick — but the couple is never named. The credits identify them as He and She. This leaves the film open for von Trier to spin an allegorical web over a story that, innocently at first, seems as if it’s going to be about grief, then seems as if it’s going to be about madness. It is about those things. But then it goes farther, much farther. If your understanding of Antichrist stops at madness, you’ve missed the black forest for the trees.
He is a psychotherapist. She is a historian and writer. In the wake of the child’s death, She is so debilitated by grief that it’s almost as if She will never recover. She blames herself, which He reassures her, in that armchair therapist manner, is normal. There is, as we will learn, absolutely nothing at all normal about Her self-recrimination. But He deals with Her emotional trauma by going into hyper-rational Professional Mode, a trick She sees through immediately. “You’re distant,” She tells Him bitterly, which He rejects. But She’s right. Clearly She knows a thing or two about psychology Herself.
But She is still mostly a basket case, shifting moods wildly from deepest anguish to manic episodes where She pounces on Him in a kind of sexual frenzy. He comes up with a therapeutic exercise: define your fears and confront them. She manages to identify a locus for every fear and anxiety currently tormenting her, a cabin deep in the woods where She recently spent some time, alone with Nick, while researching Her book. Now, it’s the precise topic She was researching, and the effect that this has had on Her, that will inform everything that transpires in the movie from the time He and She return to the cabin in an effort to heal Her.
The “cabin in the woods” thing is the one nod to conventional horror tropes that von Trier allows himself here. Beyond that, he moves into dangerous territory all his own. We know things will not turn out well for the couple. It’s in the narrative’s many layers of hidden meaning that the real depths of the horror lay.
As the couple venture deeper into the woods (named, with massive allegorical significance, Eden), it appears that Her mental state might be affecting Him more than He realizes. Seemingly innocent visions of the beauty of nature suddenly reveal decay and corruption. He spots a doe, alone in a clearing. But when the creature turns away, there is a stillborn fawn dangling grotesquely from its birth canal. Even the acorns, falling from the trees with a sound like little gunshots on the cabin roof, will mostly fall not to take root, but to die. Falling to death, pointlessly, just like Nick. Nature itself, so deceptively beautiful, always ends in death. It’s a theme von Trier conveys to startling effect in the way he photographs the location itself. I don’t care how many “cabin in the woods” horror movies you’ve seen; you’ve never seen woods, even in The Blair Witch Project, as terrifying as these.
I’m up to the point where a reviewer can get frustrated, because to write a simple consumer review of this movie seems so inadequate, when what Antichrist needs is the sort of analysis that allows you to talk freely about its ending, its surprises, its symbols, to an audience who has seen it too. This will be a movie that film students will write their master’s theses on. Entire auditoriums will debate it heatedly.
Suffice it to say I am bowled over by its artistic brilliance, yet hesitant to recommend it without giving people a full understanding of what they’re in for. (Yes, the graphic as well as the emotional content is a big part of that. Von Trier doesn’t do gore in great quantities, but when he does it, he makes it count.) But even that would be futile, as I could simply type out a scene-for-scene story walkthrough, and it would still not fully prepare you for the experience of watching it yourself. Part of me hopes I never go within a hundred miles of Antichrist again, while part of me wants to see it again, desperately, right this minute. I know a second viewing will help clarify my understanding. At the very least, I’ll be ready for that one scene, even if I still have to avert my eyes.
Von Trier has been slammed by some critics as misogynist, because his female characters routinely endure ordeals that are horrific beyond words. (Emily Watson of Breaking the Waves is another heroic actress who deserves an “I Survived Lars von Trier” medal, and von Trier will likely go down in history as the only director able to convince a star of Nicole Kidman’s stature to do a gang rape scene.) This movie will probably give those critics plenty of ammunition. I suspect that when Antichrist begins its US art-house run late in 2009, a number of feminist blogs will erupt like Mt. Saint Helens. It will be an entirely understandable reaction to a movie like this.
The thing is, while I do think there’s some real misanthropy going on in von Trier’s films, Antichrist is not, when you consider it carefully, a misogynist film by any means, despite all that She and He will experience in those woods. Actually, if anything is under indictment in this movie, it’s misogyny itself, particularly a patriarchal societal norm rooted in centuries of religious teachings that brand a woman’s sexuality, and the very essence of her femininity, as innately sinful and evil. It is only through an understanding of the film as anti-misogynist that the final shot makes any sense.
What is likely to cause the greatest argument among audiences is von Trier’s solution, which is to offer an “Antichrist,” in effect a female Christ — the hint is there in the way the title is spelled onscreen, with the last “t” replaced by the symbol for woman — to undo the Fall and cleanse womanhood of the unjust taint of “sin”. (If you think of a female Christ figure as an “anti”-Christ, you’re explicitly rejecting the patriarchal religious view that necessitates a male savior and masculine god.) I think von Trier fully intends audiences to glom on to the way his title links femininity to the Antichrist concept, and to respond angrily when they interpret the word by the conventional Christian definition — only to find he’s subverted that expectation by completely reversing the word’s meaning in his narrative. Is a female “Antichrist” better suited to redeeming humanity than a male Christ? Eve, after all, got a pretty raw deal. Without some kind of corrective, and soon, then, like the dying fox says, “Chaos reigns.”
9/10 Skulls
Thomas M. Wagner also reviews literary science fiction and fantasy at SF Reviews.net.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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