User Reviews

Where does horror reside in the psyche?

Lars von Trier has established himself as a maker of serious, avant-garde drama. He came to fame through Breaking the Waves, a controversial story of how far someone would go for love. He founded the Dogme movement of verite cinema, and made The Idiots, where lunacy and sanity are cleverly mixed. Next came Dancer in the Dark, an almost Janacek-like musical where a blind girl takes inner fantasy to extremes. There were experiments like The Five Obstructions, and two highly theatrical Brechtian pieces called Dogville and Manderlay, with chalklines instead of sets. One of the few uncontroversial films he has made is Boss of it All, an extremely clever comedy that didn't receive much attention.

If someone like von Trier makes a horror movie, it is hardly likely to be standard fare. He makes films that provide himself and his audiences with thorny intellectual challenges. This results both in adherents and those which dismiss his work as pretentious. (Inasmuch as this review is partly interpretative, other viewers may find their own preferred readings which differ from the approach given here.) With Antichrist, although there are standard 'fright' moments, the main horror is deep psychological manipulation that stays with you for days afterwards. Instead of lashings of gore that can retrospectively be dismissed as 'more CGI,' von Trier seems to do exactly the opposite of what a Freudian psychotherapist would do in releasing obsessions. He locks the terrifying nature of the horror to the most extreme sexual images. The narrative itself follows a similar process. A psychotherapist, with the best intentions, leads his wife into the darkest recesses of her mind. But instead of releasing psychological trauma, he reinforces it, until he has to defend himself when she becomes the controlling force.

A psychotherapist (Willem Dafoe) and his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) are making love as their young toddler climbs onto a desk to look at snowflakes outside. And falls to his death. This opening prologue is operatic in its soundtrack and intensity. Exquisite monochrome photography captures water droplets in slow motion to Handel. There is a very brief, aesthetically contextualised glimpse of penetration, setting the audience up for the psycho-sexual horrors that follow later. In the trauma of bereavement, He asks his wife to visualise her worst nightmares in order to help her overcome them. She pictures the woods as symbolising her fear, and they both retreat to an 'Eden' – an isolated cabin surrounded by woods.

The film is divided into six parts, including a Prologue (the lovemaking and death), Grief, Pain, and Despair; The Three Beggars, and an Epilogue. At the end of the prologue, the next three chapters are heralded by three toy soldiers from the dead son's toyroom, each appropriately named.

With Grief, comes very palpable sorrow from both leads. The players become substantial rather than dramatis personae. Colour is added to the previously monochrome palette, literally and in terms of filling out their characters.

As we go through Pain, his wife seems eventually cured. Our nerves, however, are frayed. This is compounded by the rhythmic, hypnotic pounding of acorns falling on the roof of the cabin, and his irritating but inescapable smugness as he treats his wife as a patient rather than a human being needing support. He forever has a self-satisfied, smart answer. Retreating to her own area of expertise, she comes out with ever more unanswerable metaphors, including, "Nature is Satan's Church." (She had been working previously on a book about 'Gynocide' and witch-hunts). The chapter finally introduces openly surreal elements, when a fox is unearthed. (The cunningness of foxes suggests a reliance on logic, whereas the subconscious can rely more on symbols, introducing chaos to a 'logical world.') Chapter three is entitled Despair (Gynocide). He learns things about his wife he didn't know before but perhaps should have. He is pulled into her nightmare. We see him soaked in the rain, at the mercy – for the first time – of the elements. The fourth chapter gives form to the imaginary content of the preceding three, and includes the most upsetting and outrageous scenes (which some viewers will find objectionable). The epilogue provides a narrative and psychological resolution in the only way possible when things have come to such a head. We also see the story relate now to the whole of humanity.

The title of the film contains far more than is at first apparent, although there is also some weakness for the film there. In ancient (pre-'Christian') mythology, the 'Christos' was the enlightened soul within, a central experience of the Gnostic 'heretics.' Their pure aspiration enflamed prayer to reach this exalted realisation. The danger, of course, was that they would mistake an experience along the way for the 'ultimate truth' and become 'obsessed.' This also relates to why so many mystics and spiritual seekers form their own sects. From a Roman Catholic viewpoint, it might be used to explain many different churches that fall short of the ultimate authority. Von Trier is a lapsed Catholic, and describes himself as increasingly atheist. He has said he keeps a copy of Nietzsche's Antichrist at his bedside. In Nietzschean terms, any (traditional) religious conviction is an obsession that falls short of ultimate truth. In New Testament orthodoxy, an Antichrist is what (or who) precedes the Second Coming. Obsession as a temptation along the way works in all mythologies. Psychologically, this is simple description of a process in the mind. But von Trier's use of Christian symbols complicates the issue and obfuscates an elaborate tragedy that is already nearly Shakespearean in its format.

Antichrist is sure to get reactions, even from audiences not geared to his work. For them, the extreme and graphic sexual imagery may be a psychological device too far. For others, among whom are a rare breed of horror aficionados that enjoy a challenge while being outraged and violated, it is a gem of inestimable value.

Lars Von Trier directs "AntiChrist", a film comprised of six clear segments.

Prologue: Whilst a husband and wife have sex at home, their toddler climbs out a window and falls to his death. In the film, the husband is a therapist and is known simply as He. Similarly, the wife is a researcher into the history of witchcraft and is known simply as She. Note: He is played by Willem Dafoe, who famously portrayed Jesus Christ in Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ".

Chapter one (Grief): She collapses at her child's funeral and is hospitalised. He takes over her treatment, believing that He can cure her with the miracles of Science. His theory is that she must "re-live her deepest fears". She says she associates fear with Eden, a cabin in the woods where she spent the previous summer trying to finish her dissertation on "Gynocide" (the killing of women). The duo travel to Eden (the Biblical cradle of mankind) and hike through the woods. He sees a deer whose stillborn fawn is still partly contained in its womb. At this stage, Mother and Child, Nature and Woman, aren't yet at war.

Chapter two (Pain): He directs her in therapeutic exercises. "I understand that everything beautiful is perhaps hideous," she says. "All things cry, all things die." Out walking, He sees a wounded fox which speaks: "chaos reigns."

Chapter three (Despair): He discovers that She was deliberately injuring their child. Why? He confronts her. She knocks her husband unconscious, batters his genitals, masturbates him, and bolts a lathe wheel onto his leg. He manages to crawl into a foxhole where he finds an injured bird. It is unable to fly, he is unable to walk, both creatures bound to the land. Hands reach out from the Earth, man and nature re-embrace.

Chapter four (The Three Beggars): It is revealed that she was watching their son as he climbed up to the window. She let the kid die. She mutilates her own genitals with scissors. Her scream alerts the deer, fox, and bird, which come to the cabin. Seeing Him about to extract the wheel, she stabs him. He fights back, strangles her, and burns her corpse on a pyre. A modern man of science becomes a medieval witch hunter.

Epilogue: He limps away from Eden. Human bodies litter the landscape. He watches a host of women, their faces smudged, climb up a wooded hillside. Film ends.

Confused? Bergman on cocaine, "AntiChrist" is essentially the result of director Lars Von Trier's very public rejection of religion (which followed a prolonged bout of depression). An act of embracing a certain existential hopelessness, the film also sees Von Trier penalising himself for all the "wrongs" of Catholicism. In this regard, the film calls itself anti-Christ because it is broadly against Christ, Willem Dafoe becoming a collapsed version of pseudo-science and Christianity who is symbolically castrated and turned over to a hostile world in which Nature, wild and vicious, becomes the atheist's new Godhead. Von Trier then fetishizes his newfound pessimism (the ugly cruelty of nature, vagina, birth, death etc), the Godhead - more Satan than Saviour - symbolically sodomising the holy child back out of Mary whilst faceless women are resurrected from the very bowels of the Earth.

Everything is now wrong and we are already in hell. Nature has revealed itself as the relentlessly cruel, profoundly disgusting and indifferent monster it always was. Human nature is even worse, and women are as disturbed and disturbing as anything because they are nature embodied, able to create, bound to the cosmic cycles of menstruation, pregnancy and birth. Discovering this leads the wife to self hatred, self-mutilation and infanticide. Destroy the penis and the vagina and end the spread of Satan's church. Like Godard's masterpiece, "Hail Mary", Von Trier's women perceive themselves as being controlled, raped and duped by a Nature which does nothing but inscribe its will upon all bodies. She tries to fight back, to kill her child, but it's futile. You do not belong to "yourself". Everything about you is contingent upon the Beast.

The film is graphic, but more so for the paradoxes it raises. Men find it hard to reconcile the comforting warmth of the vagina with the monstrosity it becomes at birth. Menstration is itself now ambiguous, the regular heavy flow of blood stymied by a world of plastic bags, sanitized hospitals, air fresheners and pre-cooked meat. Female nature is likewise experienced in a bizarre, almost entirely individualised way. Biology, sex, defecation, in their raw and visceral states, have receded back into the realm of the private and the professionally managed. Eyes are shut. Doors are closed.

When the couple are later kept awake by acorns falling on the roof of the cabin, She tells Him that it takes a hundred years for an oak to reproduce itself just once. The tragedy of the only child dying is the fear of the modern age. Less than a century ago, over-investment in any given child would potentially be a massive waste of time - far better to churn them out and hope that some survive. Nature: brutally pragmatic.

"Antichrist" is not, however, straightforwardly an anti-Christian film. It is a heretical film in the Gnostic non-tradition. There is no hope, no salvation, no righting of order, a fact which brought about a profound state Antonioni-like depression in Lars Von Trier. But Despair, Grief and Pain (the 3 encountered animals), as Dafoe's character points out, don't even exist. There is no separating the natural from the unnatural, right from wrong, life from death.

7.5/10 – "Blair Witch Project" with a sprinkling of Herzog, Antonioni, Bergman and Dreyer, "Antichrist" fails to both produce a new mythology of despair or even horror. Of course its scenes of mutilation and have a visceral power, but this is cheaply achieved. Worth two viewings.

Antichrist can be considered a horrible film, but I suggest you don't give up on it so easily. I think this film isn't misogynistic, but in a weird way, is trying to be the opposite. Number one, typically the antichrist is thought of as a male, not a female. As far as nature and the natural order of things, women are the givers of life, yet childbirth is a painful process. Charlotte Gainsbourg's character is at odds with her true nature, because she feels marginalized through motherhood and marriage. Deep down she has a strong need for power and to be in control. Gainsbourg's character only controls Dafoe's character through sex or pain or a combination of both. If we get religious at this point, Willem Dafoe's character is the "Adam" to Gainsbourg's "Eve" and just as in the bible, fails to protect Gainsbourg from evil. The fact that they return to Eden where Satan lurks, to find the answers to their grief and to heal is ironic.

This film has a female who goes against her nature, or what the idea of woman/motherhood is, acts as the most disturbing part of this film. More so than the violence and mutilation scenes. We know she is murderous in the fact she saw Nick at the window, but did not stop having sex, because she would have interrupted her pleasure. Women putting their pleasure (especially sexual) above their children is a no-no. This also leads to the question of what did happen the previous summer with Nick's feet. There is one scene that may offer an explanation besides the shoes being on the wrong feet. During a dream recollection the female states she heard a child crying but checked on Nick and found out he was okay, but he was in a shed. However, because we don't have the information we have at the end of the film, it is possible she did something to Nick's feet, similar to her husband's on a small scale and blocked it out of her mind, or tried to cover it up with the shoes on the wrong feet.

Willem Dafoe's character is so all knowing, so smug, that it is easy to see why the female feels detached from him, though he sees it as if she is part of him (again Adam reference). But again, Adam wasn't aware of the fact that when left alone, Eve was capable of sin. Dafoe's character plays God, but even Eden is full of bad things in nature: ticks, still born babies, self mutilation, chaos in the physical aspect of the woods. Eden is physically hard to reach and ultimately doesn't exist in the literal since. However, you do feel for him, once he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, but his wife's evil is more volatile and deeper than he realizes. So what does he do, he expels his wife, who at this point, has become Satan, but because she is a woman a witch metaphor develops here. He builds a pyre and without reservation burns her after he chokes her to death. OK I can see where misogyny comes into play for some audience members. Yet, at this point of the film, I felt I was watching two characters in the book Gynocide and felt the wife had gained power because she wanted her life to be over. Dafore's character followed his wife's unknown wishes in a strange way.

The ending of this film, with the women coming up to Dafoe's character and the woods losing its contorted features gave me two trains of thought: One is Dafoe's character freed himself from evil. The second is that he didn't free himself from evil and that the women were coming for him. The three beggars reminded more of sin, death, and resurrection. Dafoe had to acknowledge the sin, (death of his child) atone the sin by killing his wife, and resurrect himself by leaving Eden.

The cinematography at the beginning and end of this film is beautiful. You can take that away from Lars van Trier. His message may have been garbled, or it may have been a fable, which are often full of bad people and evil things. There is no tidy ending and American audiences in particular have to try to learn to accommodate this. A cult classic in the making.

If were gonna go the auteurist route, let me say the I'm convinced that Von Trier made exactly the movie he wanted to to make. It just isn't a very good movie. The point of this film can be reduced to something as simple as Von Trier showing his contempt for just about everything. Nature is portrayed as destructive force, an eternal process of death, and while a good movie certainly can be made around that premise, Antichrist quickly spirals out of control into some psychosexual parable about women being evil. Or something; the theme of witchcraft is clumsily shoved in by having Willem Dafoe find some spooky books in the attic. And while I find the overall point of the movie to be morally objectionable, it ultimately fails to present its twisted morality in an interesting or engaging way. Yes, women are witches, the world is evil, we get it, but so what? It just seems hollow, and when it all becomes tedious, the movie attempts to reconquer our attention by showing us graphic acts of violence. Sometimes it seems that a one-dimensional portrayal of an evil world drenched in a distinct directional style is the only criterion for something to warrant the distinction of "art". Lars Von Trier does his thing to perfection, but it's just not very interesting in my opinion.

The first motion picture in director Lars Von Trier's "Depression" trilogy, followed close by 2011 'Melancholia' & 2013 'Nymphomaniac'. 'Anti-Christ' is divided into a prologue, four chapters and an epilogue. It tells the story of an unnamed couple played by William Dafoe & Charlotte Gainsbourg whom after the death of their child, retreat to a cabin in the woods, in order to recover from their trauma but instead experiences increasingly violent & deadly sexual behaviors between them. Without spoiling this arthouse horror movie too much; after its premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, the motion picture was surrounded by controversy. First off, the movie's shocking graphic nudity scenes of genitals getting mutilated cause many audiences members to faint. Many couldn't handle the gore & violence despite how little of that sensationalism punishing allegory interpretation of the biblical undoing of creation is in the film's runtime of an hour and 40 minutes. In truth, most of the film is spend on slow near silent deliberately blurred motion dreamlike visuals filler that seem to drag or odd lingering shots of animal & plant life. Not only that but the pseudoscience dialogue about the natural world being inhabited with evil was too confusing & muddled than sophistical. After all, some of the symbolism like the three beggars (The grieving deer, the despairing crow and painful fox) aren't not that well developed or explained. Was Mother Nature AKA Eden, the antichrist? Who knows!? At least, the black and white opening and ending visuals with composer George Frederic Handel's masterpiece "Lascia ch'io pianga' playing was all perverse beautiful shot by Oscar winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. That said, the movie is still disturbing with all its dead babies symbolism like a fallen chick being eaten by ants or a stillborn fetus hanging from the hindquarters of the bounding mother deer to earn the movie, a NC-17 rating. Plus being banned in France nearly 7 years after its release, despite being co-produced by Canal plus (a French Company). As magnificent as the performers acting is, especially Gainsbourg who won Best Actress by the Cannes jury, their characters are so unlikeable that it's a turn off. First off, all of the psychological subjecting that the husband does to his depressed wife is highly annoying & unrealistic. All his patriarchal put downs is uncalled for. Yes I know the film is criticizing the exposure therapy treatment where an anxiety ridden patient is gradually exposed to the source of their irrational fear as the director had undergone this treatment for his own anxiety problems but this is extreme version that doesn't really existed. The true point of exposure therapy is to treat anxiety without the intention to cause any danger to the patient wellbeing. As for the wife; her own self-loathing through violent acts of mutilation and torture of a man she supposedly loves with is a bit much for me to take. Her historic viewpoints about women being tortured and killed in history because they were born evil is not even that accurate; seeing how according to the section about the European Witch Hunts on Gendercide.org. It shows that during the time periods of the witch hunts, the majority of women were not affected. The majority was targeted were foreign men. Only about fifty five percent of people who thought they were bewitched were of the female gender. Maybe that's the point of the film that inconsolable grief can cause people of sound reasoning to act irregular and abnormal, resulting them back to their animalistic nature of killing and procreating; which the Bible deem as savage and non-Christian behavior. Nevertheless I still found this movie to heavy handed and misinformation preachy. Regardless, it didn't stop many critics from dismissing it as pretentious and empty. However the most common complaint about the film is that blatantly misogynistic. After all, von Trier's previous record of psychologically torturing and debasing his female characters is highly infamous. It doesn't help that the title card and much of the promotional art, the t in the word 'antichrist' is suggested by a figure combining the Christian cross and the symbol for woman. If this is misogyny, it's a far more complex and nuanced form of misogyny than the simple prejudice. It's the one from the deepest recesses of the director's troubled psyche. It was very clear that the director was suffering from extreme melancholy when he made this movie. Nevertheless this form of self-therapy coping mechanism did not work. Trier was reportedly suffering from depression even after this film and attempting to exorcise his own personal demons by getting into fights with journalists & critics by declaring himself the best director in the world, as well as dedicate his movie to fame filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky without much fanfare. Overall: While I don't believe this film to be artless Euroshlock like some critics. As there are really powerful haunting scenes like Gainsbourg's character hearing babies crying around Eden. I do think this nihilistic psychological horror film could had been better. Unlike the biblical forbidden tree of knowledge, this sour fruit of movie is not quite worth biting into.

Some while back, the consistently atrocious Ewe Boll made a film called Seed. His self-imposed agenda was to produce a horror film that wasn't any fun. On that level he certainly achieved his objective. He managed to fashion one of the most boring, mindlessly gratuitous, unexcitingly violent, plodding, pointless, meaningless and downright time-wasting movies ever.

Whilst Boll is an errant hack with little or no cinematic skill or flair, Lars Von Trier is considered an "artist." He too has managed to craft a horror flick that isn't any fun. Now, before anyone starts yelling "it's not a horror flick" I'm going to tell you why it is.

The plot cribs from some notable past masters of the genre - Dead Calm (1989), Don't Look Now (1973), Long Weekend (1978, 2008), to name but three. Traumatised couple decant to an alien environment to try and rebuild their lives following tragedy and emotional upheaval. Weird/freaky/disturbing events befall and violence and death ensues. As in Long Weekend, nature becomes a sinister force playing a malevolent role in the narrative that unfolds, and Antichrist even replicates the cries of a "child" in the wilderness moment that distresses the female protagonist in that earlier film. The images of dead and decaying wildlife, prey unto insects, are reproduced also. There are even elements of Friedkin's schlocky The Guardian (1990) submerged in there somewhere.

So we have a standard horror/thriller setup. Next we have gore and torture porn components, framed and presented in no more disturbing ways than in the Eli Roth Hostel movies. Dafoe gets a manual drill-bit through the leg and a circular grind stone attached through the wound.

However, there are certain aspects that set Antichrist apart. It wears artistic pretensions clearly on its sleeve with slo-mo black and white sequences which bookend the movie and are filmed like ultra-crisp and sharp high definition segments from a Bergman feature. Very tasteful. We also get a glimpse of erect man muscle. Wow. Daring.

Dafoe's character, an anti-psychiatry therapist, drawls out the most pretentious sub-Freudian drivel and implements the most laughably inept psychotherapeutic formulations. theories and expositions yet expressed in a movie. Looking further back, the awesome confusion that arose between conversion hysteria and schizophrenia and the misrepresented psychobabble exposition for Norman Bates multiple personality in Hitch's Psycho is a work of deep and accurate psychological insight by comparison. When Dafoe's character reaches the absurd "eureka" moment of substituting levels of fear for the levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs it is, frankly, laughable.

Antichrist is not particularly thrilling or exciting or scary, but then I guess it's not supposed to be. If it were, it would be closer to the type of film it is pretending so hard to be distinct from.

Other main key aspects which are supposed to set it apart from its less arty stable-mates are the much touted "explicit" and shocking graphic sex scenes. Which are, to be honest, nowhere near as graphic in their depiction of masturbation and penetrative sex than the first five minutes of your average adult porno fare.

The real coup-de-gras artistic credential verification moments, however, would be the erect penis ejaculating blood and Charlotte Gainsbourg inflicting severe genital mutilation upon herself with a scissors. I remember Regan self-mutilating with a crucifix in Friedkin's the Exorcist back in 1973 – that depiction lacked the intense visual detail the process is afforded in Antichrist, but the blood, sound effects and context made it a much more chilling affair all round.

Von Trier must be having a laugh. He has taken tried and tested horror movie staples and wrapped them up in absurd psycho-babble, steeped them in controversy and repackaged and resold them as a piece of high art cinema.

So many seem to have fallen for it. The only thing truly shocking about this film, considering the pedigree of some of the stuff the director stole from, is just how boring and meaningless it seems to be. The ending should have given it away – blank-faced children stumbling like sheep through a forest whilst observed by the main character. They're the audience, folks. They're us.

Still, I'll give it 3/10 for Von Trier's dazzling sense of audacity.

So, I saw The House That Jack Built a couple of weeks ago as my official introduction to Lars Von Trier. I wouldn't say I necessarily enjoyed watching that movie, however I did find it to be very artistically compelling, extremely disturbing (to this day the most disturbing film I've ever seen, yes, more than Antichrist) and just caused me to feel a lot of things while I was watching it and I was actually thoroughly entertained throughout it, although, like i said, I didn't particularly enjoy it.

As far as Antichrist goes, I have mixed feelings about it, which is somewhat similar to the thoughts I have on The House That Jack Built. There's no denying that this is a very disturbing movie, definitely not for everyone, but I just didn't connect with it that much. It's a lot more abstract than The House That Jack Built, I thought that was a more straightforward movie in every way possible. But there's this thing about Lars von Trier, where he rides the line between artistic and pretentious and (at least for my taste) The House That Jack Built masterfully rides that line and even though he veers sometimes a little more into the pretentious side, I actually do think it is some sort of weird macabre masterpiece. I can't say the same for Antichrist.

There's the opening scene, which I think is beautiful, but ruined by the shot of Willem Dafoe's penis. And there's just a lot of excess in the movie, that i just think is uncalled for. I have to say I was bored throughout most of it. The dialogue seems forced, the editing is choppy. And there's just a lot of it that seems excessive and just like von Trier smelling his own farts kind of thing.

There are some scenes that I thought were great, like the "Chaos reigns" part was pretty chilling, to be honest. But the truth is I was just bored throughout most of it and wanted it to end.

But, it did made me think a lot about the meaning behind the movie. Like i said, it's not as straightforward as The House that Jack Built and it does require a little bit more of an analysis to kind of understand the meaning behind it. But from what I've heard not even von Trier fully understands what he was trying to say with this movie. I've seen some interpretations online about this movie being some kind of either commentary on religion or the misogyny of religion or something. Besides the clear plot of it being, overcoming grief, for me it was more of an exploration of guilt and that the Wife was exploring these themes about all the women that have been killed by like the Inquisition and throughout history serves not as the main point of the movie (it's only explored later on), but as a way to explore the feelings of grief and guilt that she has.

So here's what I mean: It's revealed near the shocking end of the film that she was aware that her son was about to fall off the window, but she did nothing because she was having sex, but I think it's a little more than that. I think here's what happens, because she was studying all of these women that were killed, she kind of blamed men for it, just straight up, it's men's fault. Not necessarily religion or ideology, it's just men killed women and that's the way she saw it. Now, having established for herself that her main enemies were men, even though she loved her son, as a mother, right, he was also a boy, who would eventually become a man and become her enemy, as she saw it. So, even though she loved him, she also hated him and tortured him for it, in subtle ways, like putting his shoes the other way around and neglected taking care of him.

And i guess another thing she takes away from her studies is that women got killed either because they were women or because there was something wrong about their sexuality, something evil about it. And so, when her son dies, she lets him die, because he's a man (or a boy) and she does so while exploring her sexual desires, thus (in her mind) releasing herself from the chains of history.

But what she doesn't know is that she basically just unleashed hell upon herself. And so her guilt is all tied up with her sexuality and she blames the husband too, right, which is why she puts the grindstone on his leg.

But then I guess von Trier wants to convey this deep message that history repeats itself or something because the man ends up killing her, but he also kills her after she brutally attacks him and tries to kill him. And when he burns her I guess it's some kind of visual re-enactment of the women who were burned at the stake. When all the women appear it's like they were all released or something, that part I didn't care much for.

But yeah, overall I guess I enjoyed more thinking about the movie, than watching it. There's a lot more to dig through, the whole thing about the forest called Eden and how Nature is the Devil's sanctuary or whatever. All of that kind of just fell flat to me, to be honest.

So overall, I'd say I wouldn't recommend it necessarily but it's an interesting movie to talk about.

After all the hype I heard surrounding Antichrist, I finally decided to sit down and watch it. Wow. This has to be the most disturbing film I've seen since Human Centipede.

Granted, the cinematography was very good, but the overall movie is just atrocious! Starting off with a slo-mo sex scene which leaves little to the imagination, the film goes downhill from there. After their kid falls out of a window to his death, the couple head off to their cabin in the woods to grieve. What follows is copious amounts of dialogue mixed with some of the most cringe inducing scenes that anyone has ever witnessed.

There is no redeeming value to this film, and I am shocked at the awards it garnered. Some scenes were almost enough to make me want to turn the DVD off. Despite being broken up into "Chapters" - the film has no real flow. It felt like it was 20 minutes at a time of the two leads talking, followed by what in my opinion is torture porn that would be enough for most people to walk out of the film.

Some of the more nasty highlights would include:

• Sex scenes which include shots of full on penetration.

• A scene where Gainsbourg is lying naked in the forest masturbating, until Dafoe arrives on scene and starts to have sex with her while arms emerge from the tree stump they lie on.

• An especially nasty scene where she smashes his testicles with a log and then masturbates him until he ejaculates blood.

• The follow on to that bit where she drills a hole in his leg, sticks her finger in the wound and then bolts a weight to his leg.

• And who can forget the infamous scene near the end where she slides a pair of scissors into her vagina and removes her clitoris.

If this is considered art, then cinema is on a downhill slide. This film is not for the squeamish, and I cannot recommend the title to anyone. Avoid at all costs.

REASONS TO SEE/NOT SEE ANTICHRIST (*MINOR SPOILERS*):

TO SEE:

1. It's a Lars von Trier film. He's the only director with two films in my all-time top 10 list ("Breaking the Waves" and "Dogville"), so needless to say, I'll watch anything he does.

2. Willem Dafoe.

3. Charlotte Gainsbourg.

4. The Prologue and the first two chapters in the film: the first half or so is an intriguing psychological horror about a couple trying to cope with the grief of losing their toddler son. The film is told in a prologue, Chapter I: Grief, Ch. II: Pain (Chaos Reigns), Ch. III: Despair, Ch. IV: The Three Beggars, and an epilogue.

5. By the end of chapter II, when a fox stares at Willem Dafoe and says "Chaos reigns" (which inadvertently made lots of spectators laugh), you will either see this as a ridiculous scene, not take the film seriously, perhaps even walk out; or see it as Lars winking at the audience, as if saying "If you think this is funny, you have no idea what's coming next" - and stay for the rest of the ride. That will determine whether or not this is the film for you.

NOT SEE:

1. A different film starts at Chapter III: an extremely gory, absurdly series of graphic scenes made purely for shock factor. While "Dogville" was and still is the most disturbing film I've ever seen (but also brilliant and psychologically stimulating), Antichrist is easily the most sickening.

2. A scene where a penis (Willem Dafoe's character, but certainly a body double's) literally ejaculates blood - is simply something I wish I could erase from my memory.

3. Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose organic, earthy beauty and fearlessness (her parents are Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, damn it!) fits the part very well (and even won the Best Actress prize at Cannes this year for her performance, a trend among Von Trier's female stars, who always deliver strong, memorable performances, although he is constantly accused of being misogynistic), is usually a pleasure to watch. But to see her cutting her own clit with scissors is inexcusable. By the time that happened, I had half of my face covered.

4. More mutilation per square feet than virtually any slasher movie you'll encounter. Personally, I don't think that's even necessary.

5. Dedicated to the Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky, this is a film that, love it or hate it, certainly is impossible to be indifferent to - which also could, and perhaps even should, be an argument to whether one should see it or not. However, in my not so humble opinion, Antichrist is so uncomfortable and disturbing for all the wrong reasons - which doesn't mean I won't keep watching Von Trier's films (bring us "Wasington", the conclusion to the "USA - Land of Opportunities" trilogy already - it's been a long wait!).

Films invariably provoke emotions on the part of the viewer. I have been shocked, awed, amused, saddened and comforted by a feature length before but never have I been so annoyed. For the hour and 40 I was sat in my seat I was bombarded by a free-fall of blatant and obvious metaphors sandwiched between edited clips of the selfish tripe that was flowing from His and Her "grief-addled" minds.

The cinematography was brilliant, the shots were beautifully composed, most wouldn't be out of place as still images on their own. The sound and post production was perfect, a litany of heart thudding moments and breath holding captured by the crescendo of rushing winds and thudding acorns. But even these can't make up for the fallacies of the storyline.

He never left his therapist mindset. Even with his leg weighted with concrete, or as he was strangling his patient his face was blank. The film was essentially all about Her and her evolving stance on women, nature and their corresponding evil.

I'm sure a film student would love to study this piece as the bulls**t they could write on how sex juxtaposed with a dead tree symbolises this and that till the end of days. And indeed, the people who rated this film highly have plenty to wax lyrical about, but I didn't want to be force fed Freudian messages through talking foxes and circumcision via scissors as I find it a tedious affront on my intelligence and ability to come to my own conclusions.

It is with some regret that I have decided to spend time reviewing Von Trier's 'Antichrist'. I am, by nature a curious film watcher, and will, at times, succumb to temptation and reserve a couple of hours to cast my own opinion, when a film creates ample controversy. Thus far my curiosity, across the spectrum has been met with, elation and disappointment in equal measure.

This is, and I make no apologies for this statement, a truly terrible film. I was hoping to read the user comments and be satisfied that it was met with the utter indifference and loathing that followed my own viewing and was genuinely shocked with the ridiculous ratings that have been pulled from the posteriors of those who mistakenly interpreted this dull and pointless movie as high art.

Given that the acting was by no means sub par(Dafoe was very good as a husband/psychiatrist torn between his professional disposition and the demons of his relationship with his wife; and Gainsbourg was nothing if not committed to the role of a postnatally depressed lunatic) and the cinematography was at times excellent, it should give you some idea of how bad this movie was.

One review entitled 'Canonical Sermon, Classical Hero Journey, Numeric Elegance and Name of The Beast' offered an academic dissection of the movie...referencing the film's numerical balance and some other contextual information that completely fails to justify the relevance and poor execution of this movie, which in principle, before pen hit paper, may have carried some merit and proved to be a dark and disturbing study of the human/inhuman condition.

So, let me 'break it down' without offering insight where there is none or jumping on board the 'Turner Prize' high-art mindset that has corrupted modern art finding thought and intellect in the explicit and mundane.

Firstly: This is NOT a balanced movie, no matter how Von Trier cuts the film into chapters. A nice prologue, followed by over an hour of self absorbed boring nothingness (aside from the revelation of child cruelty), climaxing in a violent last 10 minutes that arrived way to late for me to care about the resolution. Simply put, it is quite an achievement to bore someone to the point that genital mutilation, the ejaculation of blood the image of a wife fingering a freshly drilled hole in her husband's leg does not leave them shocked or a little sick; and yet I was so paralyzed by boredom that I was rendered immune to the horrors depicted on the television in front of me.

It is all very well dissecting this movie for its symbolism and I am sure that for an academic essay it provides the necessary 'meat' for some critical analysis, but seriously, why bother when as a film, as a piece of entertainment, this movie fails at its most basic level.

I have watched interviews with the cast, who really don't seem to understand the movie and listened to drivel about how this was a product of Lars' depression. The reality is that 'controversy' is the most marketable aspect of the film and one has to question the misogynistic stance/intentions of the movie. I am not a fan of feminism as it has moved beyond equality but it certainly wouldn't be too late to question Von Trier's relationship to the fairer sex, both in the context of this movie and his work as a whole.

Imbalanced and a cry for attention; a cheap snub of mainstream Hollywood that craves the attention Von Trier claims to shun; or a failed art-house movie that owes its substance and form to antiquated intellectual study that it fails to properly address and far superior 'cabin in the woods' movies that it does not get close to matching....Take your pick of which best describes this terrible film.

If you want cabin horror, watch 'Evil Dead'. if you like dark and harrowing try 'requiem for a dream'. There has been some talk as to the meaning of 'Antichrist' in the context of this movie. I can say with some certainty that it refers to the pure evil that stole 2 hours of my life last week. Damn you Lars Von Trier, you are an idiot.

Made for all the pseudo-intellectuals who can spend years analyzing every detail and nuance - which I'm quite sure has been put there for no particular reason at all.

Sure, the falling baby-scene was nicely shot. And the duo of Dafoe & Gainsbourg do their best to act out Lars von Triers ideas - but it doesn't help.

It's not scary. Not moving. Not gripping.

I was actually laughing and shaking my head at most of the nonsense in this movie, and I'm quite sure that wasn't von Triers goal.

In short: simply rubbish.