Editorials
Watch ‘Antichrist’ With Your Partner This Valentine’s Day. Seriously.
There are many accepted, more conventional choices for horror films to watch with your paramour this Valentine’s Day. You could unwind with a horror-comedy like Lisa Frankenstein or Warm Bodies, or take on a Valentine’s Day slasher like My Bloody Valentine or Heart Eyes. You could even delve deeper into pure romance with something like Spring, or get Gothic with Crimson Peak.
But what if you’ve done all of that? What if you and your fellow horror-loving partner are after something more daring, something unconventional, something maybe just a little dangerous?
Then make this the Valentine’s Day you watch Lars von Trier‘s divisive masterpiece Antichrist together. Yes, really.
Antichrist is many things. An art film. An extreme horror gauntlet. Grief, horror, and folk horror joined in unholy matrimony. At its core, though, the film is a dialogue, an exploration of the raw emotional baggage of two people in love, and what happens when the power dynamic they’ve grown so used to starts to morph and crumble in their hands. The plot’s quite simple: A man (Willem Dafoe) and a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg), reeling from the accidental death of their toddler son, retreat to Eden, their woodland cabin, for what’s meant to be a therapeutic journey of healing.
He (Dafoe is only ever credited as “He,” and Gainsbourg is “She”) is a respected, determined therapist who believes his intimate knowledge of his wife will help her overcome her grief, anxiety, and outright fear. She believes he’s only doing this because, now that She’s a panicked, weeping mess, He finds her interesting for the first time.
They go to the woods, to Eden, specifically because She confides in her husband that Eden is actually the seat of her fear, despite her previous enjoyment of the place. After weeks of panic attacks, depression, and bouts of hungry, angry sex that She uses as a momentary distraction from her grief, He decides that exposure therapy is the only thing for her. They must go to the rotten core of her fear, revel in it, and come out the other side cleansed. In theory, anyway.
Written amid Von Trier’s own deep depression, Antichrist is about a lot of things, and you can find many different throughlines in its layered, forest-thick narrative. Psychotherapy is, obviously, a big factor, as is grief, and repression, and sexual violence, and the very nature of evil. But what the film does best, what it does most powerfully, lies in its portrayal of two people who love each other testing the absolute limits of that love and devotion, to see if they survive.
Love and fear are dark sisters, and I don’t just mean in fiction. If you love someone, truly love them, then you constantly live with the fear, however distant its hum might be, that you’ll lose them. It’s not a matter of insecurity or even the nagging sense that you’re going to make a mistake. We know because we understand the natural order of the world that loss can come at any time, in any circumstance, and the film reminds us of this in its opening scene, an excruciating and operatic explosion of grief out of nowhere. Love might be the dominant emotion, but fear is always there, tickling the backside of our brains, and like the characters at the heart of his story, Von Trier wants his audience to confront it head-on.
For all its darkness, I don’t consider Antichrist to be a cynical film, or one bent on shock above all else. Its characters, these two stand-ins for every couple in the world, the Adam and Eve of this cursed Eden, are sincere in their desire for progress. He wants to help his wife, and She wants to find a way out of the black cloud that chokes the breath out of her every time she thinks of her son. These two people are trying, confronting the tests the world throws at them, attempting to push past obstacles. They are united by these efforts, even as the horrors of the forest begin to divide them.
I won’t say more about what waits in those woods for fear of spoiling the film for new viewers, but even at its darkest, Antichrist is a film about thought-provoking questions couched in universal horror. Both of these people are terrified, in different ways and about different things, but they’re united in their pursuit of answers, even if they never come. At first glance, it’s not romantic, but the more you place yourself into these characters, the more you start to realize that there’s arguably nothing in the world more romantic than trying to understand someone you love, even if it costs you everything. Antichrist is about how harrowing and terrifying that pursuit can be, but because it’s a work of fiction, you and your loved one can sit back and process the questions it asks, and the conversations it provokes, from a safe remove. It might even make your relationship stronger, if only because you feel far less damaged than these two deeply wounded people.
Is it an easy watch? Absolutely not. Will it make you feel warm and fuzzy? Probably not. But because love and fear have always walked together, hand in hand, it is a rewarding one, and it’s deserving of the bold gambit that is watching it on the most romantic day of the year.
Antichrist is currently streaming on Kanopy and Mubi.
Editorials
‘Bloodstone: Subspecies II’ Revisited: A Bigger, Bolder Follow-Up to Full Moon’s Vampire Cult Classic
Horror sequels are a peculiar thing. In most cases, follow-ups to scary movies tend to retread the same formula with different victims and more over-the-top scares. This is because audiences tend to be more interested in the antagonists of these pictures than anything else, with even main characters becoming disposable when the time comes to produce a sequel.
That’s why some of the most memorable horror sequels are the ones that actually manage to hold onto interesting survivors from previous films while also pushing the story forward instead of having the same thing happen again to a different group of people. From Scream 2 to Dream Warriors (and arguably even The Exorcist III: Legion), there are quite a few of these innovative sequels to go around.
However, if there’s one franchise that deserves more attention when discussing bigger and better continuations that make the most of episodic filmmaking, it has to be Ted Nicolaou’s Subspecies.
The Full Moon classic spawned an indie horror icon, but bizarre sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II is even more beloved than its predecessor.
Building a Bigger Vampire Saga
While the film itself takes place almost immediately after the events of the first movie, Bloodstone only entered production a couple of years after the release of the original as both Charles Band and Nicolaou weighed the pros and cons of returning to Romania to continue the series. In an effort to maximize efficiency, the team decided to invest in a trilogy where parts II and III, now fully written by Nicolaou, would be filmed simultaneously over the course of a single grueling shoot.
Much like the first Subspecies, Bloodstone’s low budget meant that the filmmakers once again had to cut corners and re-use as many of their resources as possible. Thankfully, the process was much easier this time around as Nicolaou, with the help of Romanian cinematographer Vlad Paunescu and his wife Oana, became more acquainted with local customs and made new friends. Shooting abroad still came with its own unique set of challenges due to a lack of translators and the occasional safety concerns, but the crew managed to make things work by filming things guerrilla-style and setting up shop in abandoned caves and real medieval ruins.
The director’s newfound contacts, coupled with the relative success of the first movie, meant that he was basically given free rein over an assortment of shooting locations usually considered off-limits for indie horror. That’s why Bloodstone features insanely ambitious lighting and effects work even during scenes shot in the middle of a bustling Bucharest. The filmmakers went so far as to project Radu’s Nosferatu-like shadows over local monuments as if he were a Romanian boogeyman, an idea that was actually encouraged by local cinephiles.
In fact, many of the more elaborate scenes here had originally been planned for the first movie before being discarded due to the lack of available resources. It was only with the support of Romanian fans and filmmakers that Bloodstone was able to give Radu a chance to be even more menacing the second time around.
Michelle’s Transformation Takes Center Stage
However, when it came to the American part of the crew, not everyone was able or willing to return for another round of Romanian adventuring. That’s why Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) is unceremoniously killed off at the beginning of the film while the role of Michelle had to be recast. Denice Duff took over for Laura Mae Tate, with the character now being joined by her sister, Rebecca, played by Melanie Shatner (yes, that Shatner).
In the finished film, we follow Michelle as she awakens to her new life as a vampire and discovers that Radu has murdered her lover. Struggling with grief and her newfound bloodlust, Michelle contacts her sister overseas, with Rebecca soon travelling to Romania on an ill-advised rescue mission. Meanwhile, Radu (Anders Hove) reaches out to his undead Mummy (Pamela Gordon, underneath heavy layers of impressive makeup effects) and promises to deliver her the coveted Bloodstone artifact while also making Michelle his eternal consort.
Revisiting the movie, I was impressed with how introspective this story is when compared to the original. The sequel assumes that you’re already familiar with the previously established characters, so the story wastes no time in exploring the immediate aftermath of the previous film’s events. From Michelle’s reluctant transformation into a creature of the night to Radu’s obvious mommy issues, Nicolaou is way more interested in pushing these characters into new and uncharted territory rather than recycling existing plot points.
Practical Effects and Gothic Atmosphere Still Impress
Yet, much like the first film, it’s Romania itself that makes the movie worth watching. The ruins of Castle Vladislav are even more majestic now, and visiting the moody streets of Bucharest with its surprisingly punk-rock nightlife made for a nice change of pace when compared to the original film’s quiet village setting. Once again, the abundance of interesting locations makes the movie feel much more expensive than it really is, with the filmmakers surrounding our characters with a living, breathing environment that would be impossible to recreate in a studio.
The increased freedom also allowed Nicolaou to flex his filmmaking muscles and tackle more ambitious blocking/composition in the sequel. The low budget and tropey script mean that the visuals don’t always work, but it’s consistently clear that this neo-expressionist style could only come from a passionate team attempting to pay homage to the shadowy horror classics of yesteryear. If the retro atmosphere isn’t enough for you, there’s enough practical gore here to satisfy even the most demanding of horror hounds!
Radu himself is also far more interesting now that Hove is more comfortable working alongside an international crew, with the actor having gone on record explaining that, while he spent more time drinking vodka than working while shooting the first movie, the sequel was a much more creatively satisfying experience for everyone involved. The character’s relationship with his abusive Mummy is also a highlight of the expanded mythology, especially since the practical effects that bring her to life are just as freaky now as they were back in ’93.
My only real gripe with the horror elements of the picture comes from the glaring absence of the diminutive stop-motion minions from the first film, though I guess the surprisingly entertaining addition of Professor Popescu (Michael Denish) and his archeological antics mostly make up for that.
Bloodstone: Subspecies II is obviously the middle chapter of a trilogy, with the ending feeling a lot less definitive than its predecessor as several plot threads are left to dangle in the wind, but I appreciate how the flick explores new ground while remaining faithful to nearly all the ideas that made the original such a good time. While I don’t think it’s as big of an improvement over the first movie as some fans make it out to be, Bloodstone is definitely worth revisiting if you’re a fan of old-fashioned vampire yarns.
Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion to this initial trilogy, Bloodlust: Subspecies III!
You must be logged in to post a comment.