Antlers (2021)    Searchlight/Horror    RT: 99 minutes    Rated R (violence including gruesome images, language)    Director: Scott Cooper    Screenplay: C. Henry Chaisson, Nick Antosca and Scott Cooper    Music: Javier Navarrete    Cinematography: Florian Hoffmeister    Release date: October 29, 2021 (US)    Cast: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Graham Greene, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane, Amy Madigan, Sawyer Jones, Cody Davis, Lyla Marlow, Jesse Downs, Arlo Hajdu, Dorian Kingi.    Box Office: $10.6M (US)/$18.9M (World)

Rating: ** ½

 The operative word for the horror movie Antlers is dark. It’s dark in every imaginable way- visually, thematically and the characters it depicts. It’s set in the most depressing place in the country, a small Oregon town dying a slow death due to economic strife. Everywhere you look is misery with the high rates of business closures, unemployment, abuse, drug addiction and apathy. Nobody so much as cracks a smile in this hellish place. Then as if the townsfolk didn’t have enough to deal with, there’s a monster in their midst, a literal creature commonly known as a wendigo.

 Directed by Scott Cooper (Hostiles) and co-produced by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), Antlers gets off to a hell of start when two men and a young boy are attacked by something while working out of a meth lab in an abandoned mine. A little while later, schoolteacher Julia Meadows (Russell, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) notices one of her students, a quiet boy named Lucas (Thomas), is exhibiting signs of abuse. She would know; she was abused by her father as a child. It’s the reason she left town twenty years earlier and returned only after her father’s suicide. A recovering alcoholic, she’s also dealing with the guilt of leaving her younger brother Paul (Plemons, The Irishman) behind to take their dad’s abuse. He’s now the town sheriff, a job he got only because nobody else wanted it.

 In any event, everybody is quick to dismiss Julia’s concerns. Paul thinks she’s projecting her own trauma onto the boy. The principal (Madigan, Uncle Buck) says there isn’t much she can do even if she wanted to which she really doesn’t. Julia tries talking to Lucas who denies anything is wrong at home, but there is. His father Frank (Haze, Venom) and little brother Aiden (Jones) survived the attack at the mine and managed to make it home where Frank orders the boy to keep them in a locked room and not let them out under any circumstances. He’s turning into something feral and bloodthirsty. Naturally, some idiot sets him free to terrorize the town while Julia takes it on herself to protect Lucas.

 I like Antlers more or less. It’s a brooding piece with some decent creature work, nice splatter effects and a handful of cool “BOO!” scenes. However, the story is a bit of a mess and it lacks character development. Atmosphere takes precedence over character here. Despite all their expository dialogue, we don’t get to know all that much about Julia and Paul. They had horrible childhoods that still haunt them today. That’s about it. Still, they do a decent job with what little they’re given to work with. As for supporting characters like Madigan’s principal and the Native American ex-sheriff played by Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves), they go way underdeveloped. Basically, one is a lamb for the slaughter and the other is there to explain the mythical creature they’re dealing with.

 For me, the real stars of Antlers are the guys behind it, Cooper and del Toro. They’re the ones that make it work. It’s not unfamiliar territory to either artist. Another film of Cooper’s, the excellent boxing drama Out of the Furnace, similarly centers on people living on the economic fringes of society. Although he’s credited as a producer only, Antlers bears del Toro’s distinctive mark in showing how real pain can manifest itself as unreal horror. Together, they’ve assembled an ambitious horror movie that doesn’t always reach its lofty goals. It wants to say something about the ills of modern society and it does to some degree, but it doesn’t quite get all the way there. It’s a little more effective as a mere horror flick although I think it will put off a lot of viewers. Even so, I predict it will develop a cult following in the years to come.