Antlers (2021) Dir: Scott Cooper

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This film has been sat on my watchlist, waiting for a rainy day, or, in this case, a very low energy evening. The film was directed by Scott Cooper, who also made the more recent 'The Pale Blue Eye', which I thought was fairly good. My expectations were moderate to low, in regards to how good or bad the film would be, mainly because of the very middling critical and audience reception that the film has had, but I am always hoping for a nice surprise, particularly with horror films.

One thing that the film did extremely well was to create atmosphere. The film's opening scenes were very eerie, very intriguing, and quietly tense in a way that, admittedly, I was not expecting. This was aided greatly by some genuinely very decent practical effects, which I appreciated a lot, as well as a suspenseful and atmospheric soundtrack, which was instrumental in the film's solid start.

The story was where this film really exposed itself. It was full of repetitive and predictable horror tropes, which disappointed me a lot, because the mythology it draws from is genuinely very fascinating, as well as being a wellspring of thematic potential. Instead of being a rich and thought-out horror, however, this became a disappointingly generic monster horror. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the narrative went off the rails when the monster was fully unleashed. It lost all its intrigue and suspense.

Unfortunately, Kerri Russell's leading turn in this film lacked much in the way of subtlety, which would have benefitted her a lot, particularly early on. She showed plenty of capability here and there, but was unable to pull a consistently good performance out of her character, which, in fairness to her, wasn't the easiest job. The writing of all the characters, including hers, was not particularly strong. Even so, I would have hoped that she would have been able to produce something a little more endearing.

I think Jesse Plemons has proven himself as a very talented and capable actor countless times in the last few years, but even he struggled to make something of his character's dull and repetitive writing. I did find him relatively compelling, at least, but his character needed something more to make his role feel as necessary as the audience was supposed to believe it was.

It feels harsh to say, but I was extremely unimpressed by Jeremy T. Thomas. I really didn't like his acting - he was so bereft of any personality at all. At some points, this worked, but displaying such a blank and emotionless face for almost the entire film was just not enough. Even in the scenes where his character was supposed to be reacting more, Thomas looked vacant and without expression.

Overall, this was an adequate, but very unexceptional horror film, which hinted at, but ultimately failed to capitalise on its very interesting premise. The film started off strongly, but fell off severely towards the end. I would love to see more films that delve into indigenous mythology and folklore, but equally, I want those films to be worthy of those tales. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that this one was.