The dreary, melancholic tones of cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister’s version of smalltown Oregon supplies a fitting backdrop to Antlers: a grisly, Guillermo del Toro-produced first foray into the realms of body horror for director Scott Cooper. Known best for austere, gritty drama, Cooper – who most recently helmed excellent 2017 revisionist western Hostiles, a slow-burning metaphor for the end of the American West – has crafted an equally bleak film in Antlers that feels similarly allegorical.
Or, rather, it tries somewhat overbearingly to be so. A story about the longevity of trauma and abuse, a searing comment on class, a pointed indictment of America’s treatment of its indigenous population: Antlers appears to be about all of it yet also manages to be about none of it. The result is a jarring, self-serious monster movie that teases some intriguing ideas but fails to truly bury them under the skin.
The film follows Julia (Keri Russell), a middle-school teacher returning to her home town after decades away. Her dark past mirrors the troubled domestic life of Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas), an enigmatic young student of hers with a propensity for downbeat stories and nightmarish drawings. Julia’s growing concern soon entwines her in the recent spate of gruesome deaths being investigated by her brother, sheriff Jesse Plemons. Meanwhile, whispers in the local Native American community speak of the reawakening of a terrifying spirit from their folklore.
Teeming with rural angst, all overcast skies and perpetual shades of grey, it’s not exactly the most understated of genre offerings. Opening with a rumination on the nature of mythology as a means of understanding our world, Antlers rather glaringly spells out what horror has been doing for centuries. It signposts a story that is equally unsubtle: a striking, if underdeveloped examination of those whose pain, in both a figurative and literal sense, is ripping them apart and replacing them with someone different altogether.
Ultimately though, despite a handful of inspired moments, and a rather deliciously grotesque creature design – unsurprising for a film with del Toro’s name attached to it – Antlers suffers from being unable to shoulder the weight of its own ideas. It’s frustrating when it should be engaging; blunt when it should be razor-sharp.
Dir: Scott Cooper (15, 99 mins)
Out now in cinemas
words GEORGE NASH