Antlers: Criatura oscura

Julia Meadows (Keri Russell) is a recovering alcoholic and school teacher in remote Oregon. She is estranged from her sheriff brother Paul Meadows (Jesse Plemons). One of her students, Lucas Weaver, is getting bullied. She tries to connect with the child who is showing some disturbing signs.

The opening text threw me off and the story is a bit muddled. I do like the dark atmosphere and the overall creepiness. I like the monster designs. The story may have a few too many elements. Some simplifying could be helpful.

Antlers nails the setting and mood, using Oregon as a back drop for this slow moving film about a school teacher (Keri Russell) who begins to investigate one of her students disturbing art. While the acting is strong, and there are some basic elements of horror that work, overall the movie is a lot less than the sum of it's parts.

While the movie sets up a strong base for a creepy story, the film does very little with it. We are treated to cliche soup, including creepy kid with art book, 'powerless' authority figures and even the hints of past tragedy to try to add layers to the characters.

In the end, the film falls back into the same patterns of all mediocre horror films, and putters out without much impact.

This movie takes itself very seriously, and wants you to as well. Unfortunately, other than some good elements of mood and solid acting there isn't much here.

I think most viewers will find things they enjoy as well as criticisms with this movie. The problems include overused tropes, ridiculous character decisions, and not enough originality. The story tries to introduce too many themes without making any of them really necessary to the narrative. On the plus side, there are some nice visuals, well done effects, and a fair amount of nasty stuff to look at. I did not regret watching it, but I don't expect to revisit it either.

I just left the theatre after seeing antlers, firstly I will say I enjoyed the film very much. Being my favourite genre, I think it's important to appreciate when a team of talented filmmakers comes together for a foray into horror. That is very much on display here; antlers is a very well made movie, with excellent performances top to bottom, a dreary score, brilliant visuals, and some truly incredible practical effects. It makes most mainstream horror seem extremely tame by comparison as well.

That being said, I was so excited when I first saw the trailer for this movie, and have had so long to hype it up in my own mind, that nothing could have lived up to my expectations by the time it released. I feel this will be the case for many others too.

All said and done, antlers is an excellent movie and a must see for fans of the horror genre, especially creature horror. It delivers on the effects, gore, and scares.

Good Setting, Cut, Soundtrack and Camera, but a wasted Story-Progress.

No Tension and No Character-Build-Up lead to a overall mediocre Horror-Flick.

A shame😥 the Body-Horror-Scenes and Creature-Effects are very well done👍 But in the End, it doesn't come close to Budget-Equals like "Mama", "Sinister", "Clown".... ...maybe i waited a bit to long for this Movie Here in Europe😉