Antlers

Antlers is a good mythological creature film featuring a Wendigo. A mythological cannibalistic monster with antlers in the spiritual tradition of North American Algonquian-speaking tribes. Directed by Scott Cooper, with Hostiles (2017), Black Mass (2015), Crazy Heart (2009) among a few others under his belt. Based upon the short story “The Quiet Boy” by Nick Antosca.

Cliché story and flat characters

It has a great potential and a great creature design, unfortunately it fell flat. The story wasn’t very engaging and its hard to connect with the characters. Even though they show traumatic experiences of the character’s past, none of it hits home. They show so little of bits and pieces of what they went through that it doesn’t engage any emotions, they’re just information being fed to the audience.

Poor lighting

Even though it was a horror creature film and it should’ve kept me on my toes during the entirety of it, it didn’t. I was yawning towards the middle part of it. The effects were good and all, but most of the parts where something interesting is about to happen, the lighting was dark. Too dark even for a horror film. You couldn’t even see their faces and expressions all that well. That led me to feel disengaged emotionally with the characters.

Creature design

Mainly, the creature was the thing that got me to watch this, and although they did show some parts of the Wendigo, we couldn’t really see the whole beauty of it. It was very unfortunate as the design, so far as I’ve seen, was glorious. It just fell short in the delivery of it. It was weird though because it should’ve been intimidating or daunting when being face to face with it, but it never got a chance to scare people, most of the time it creeps up behind the victim and impales them with its antlers. I liked the effect of its burning beating heart, radiating from the heart all throughout its beastly figure. Also how the father turned into a Wendigo I think was awesome, arms spread sideways, then he opens his mouth, and giant antlers coming out of it.

The best thing about this one, direction-wise, was towards the end, right after the teacher (played by Keri Russell), kills Frank Weaver (Scott Haze), the one who turned into a Wendigo. She then turns to kill the younger sibling, Aiden (Sawyer Jones). Because he was somehow infected and will turn into a Wendigo soon, following his father. This is by far the most emotionally engaging part of the film, and the one I’ll remember the most.

Plot hole I noticed

Speaking of the younger sibling being “infected”, this is not possible to happen. Because a Wendigo is a demonic spirit that passes from person to person, feeding off of greed and addiction, hence the metaphor of drug abuse in the intro. Unless there were 2 Wendigo spirits at that time. And one can only turn into a Wendigo after feeding off of human flesh, which didn’t happen with Aiden. Also, before the credits rolled, we see the brother, Paul Meadows (played by Jesse Plemons), showing initial signs of turning into a Wendigo. I guess that they turned it into sort of a virus that transfers after being wounded by one.

The effects of the corpse being left behind by the Wendigo was cool as hell. Its like a carcass of an animal you see on the desert after being picked on by vultures.
The showing of how trauma affects people even years after the event was great.

The opening scene of Antlers with the quote:

This quote gave me high hopes that this movie will be as good as say “The Ritual (2017)” but its not, not even close, I was expecting that it would give me that same pleasure of watching, mainly because of its similarity of the creature having antlers. I could see the Wendigo being in one of those boxes in Cabin In The Woods (2011).

Conclusion

Honestly, Antlers disappointed me. I love creature-features, even moreso if its tied with mythological beasts and lores. It did not feel anything like it. The premise was okay, not very interesting. The lore was great though, however they didn’t build up on it properly.

The whole duration of Antlers felt like a flat line. I was not concerned, worried, or even curious of what’s going to happen next, I was just waiting for it to finish. If it weren’t for a great creature design, this would be an easy 2 out of 5.