Antichrist (2009)
Antichrist (2009) 3/10
Antichrist will polarize audiences. You either love it or hate it. In my case, i hated it. It was a dull, pretentious and needlessly graphic film which made the film experience as enjoyable as a lobotomy. But it one respect it did succeed marvelously in that it managed to evoke despair in the hearts of the audience. Antichrist is bookended by moments of brilliance. The prologue opens in a hauntingly gorgeous black and white sequence while the epilogue finishes with a mind-scratching sequence. But the core of the film is relentlessly bleak, starting out as an exercise in psychological spooks before degenerating into mindless gratuitous torture. This is one film that i won’t watch again. While i am a fan of how director Lars Von Triers pushes the envelope of cinema, this is one film i would classify as a provocative failure. The film plays out like a lucid, psychotic nightmare and the allusions it draws about the fundamental essence of human nature is as haunting as it is repulsive. The leads, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe are fearless in their performance but the limited and unfathomable script lets them down.
“A fever dream of the twisted, depraved and unnerving, it’s quite unlike anything you’ve seen before. And quite unlike anything the right-minded may want to see again.”- David Edwards
“I rarely find a serious film by a major director to be this disturbing. Its images are a fork in the eye. Its cruelty is unrelenting. Its despair is profound. Von Trier has a way of affecting his viewers like that.”- Roger Ebert
