As movie titles go, “Antlers” seems readymade for one of two holidays — either Christmas or Halloween — and it’s kind of a shame to see it squandered on the latter. Now what is some enterprising fi…
” seems readymade for one of two holidays — either Christmas or Halloween — and it’s kind of a shame to see it squandered on the latter.
What makes suggestion-driven “Antlers” so disturbing isn’t the movie’s tension- and dread-building mechanics so much as the way the filmmaker burrows into the minds of his two main characters: abuse survivor turned elementary school teacher Julia Meadows and her soft-spoken student Lucas , in whom she’s able to recognize red flags that remind her of trauma she experienced as a child.
Following an ominous opening scene, in which Lucas’ dad Frank and younger brother Aiden are attacked by a giant creature in an abandoned mine, Julia notices a certain darkness in her student. Asked to share a story in class, Lucas tells one far too bleak for someone his age. Upon further investigation, she finds a pile of drawings stashed in his desk that look like they could have been done by a serial killer, all sharp teeth and bloody animals.
There are multiple metaphors at work here, the most obvious being the overplayed cliché of an angry Native spirit seeking revenge for what the white man has done to exploit land that wasn’t his to begin with . Far more unsettling, if you’ll pardon the pun, is the movie’s focus on how a child copes with being forced into the adult role when his parents are otherwise incapable.
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