The gruesome nature of what follows is best avoided by those of a delicate disposition.
Antichrist (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:125
Fresh:62
Rotten:63
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: Gruesome, explicit and highly controversial; Lars Von Triers arthouse-horror, though beautifully shot, is no easy ride.
Rated: 18
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:24-07-2009
Synopsis: Only two actors, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Defoe, inhabit the space of this supernatural thriller directed by Lars Von Trier. The stars play a couple who attempt to grieve for their dead... Only two actors, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Defoe, inhabit the space of this supernatural thriller directed by Lars Von Trier. The stars play a couple who attempt to grieve for their dead child by living in seclusion in the middle of a forest. But their story does not end there: in the forest, they encounter pure evil in Satan. With Von Trier at the helm, ANTICHRIST promises to be a challenging, intelligent film that doesn’t adhere to the conventions of cinema or religion. [More]
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Director: Lars von Trier
Director: Lars von Trier
Screenwriter: Lars von Trier, Anders Thomas Jensen
Studio: IFC Films
Reviews for Antichrist
Like David Lynch's Eraserhead, it's perhaps impossible that this flick will truly ENTERTAIN, but provided you can hang onto your sanity, its creepy mood and twisty f**ked-up ending will spin in your conscious for weeks to come.
You may be gripped by Antichrist's depraved fairytale, or write it off as arthouse excrement. Either way, we guarantee you'll be relieved as hell when it's over.
A beautiful battery of depraved images and irrational associations, Lars Von Trier's two-handed essay in horror is as distracting and deadening as depression itself.
A troubling but refreshing sense of an artist uncloaked. A violent conflict of ideas and images. Any satisfaction from loose ends tied and questions answered? Forget it. It’s just not that sort of film.
It's ploddy, affected and ludicrously nasty but, for all that, Lars von Trier's new movie could well be the best horror film since the genre's 70s heyday.
It’s thrilling to see that von Trier’s vicious sense of mischief, his moviemaking skill and his desire to smash limits and expectations all remain undimmed. However you swallow it, this bizarre, hysterical melodrama is impossible to ignore.
We can scoff and dismiss it as the last gasp ravings of a deranged opportunist. Or we can look, unflinchingly, at Von Trier’s fantastically painful mirror and acknowledge the Id within us all. Now that is scary.
What Lars is driving at is something completely bizarre, massively uncommercial and strangely perfect.
Antichrist is a beautifully shot, powerfully acted and frequently disturbing drama, but it's also darkly funny.
Antichrist is a fairground ride through the brain of a genius, both nightmarish and apocalyptic. Trier’s head is the most dangerous place in modern cinema, its multiple caverns mysteriously structured and weirdly laid out.
Antichrist is something to be experienced rather than understood, at least at a first viewing, and it concludes in the visionary epilogue on a tone of tragic tranquillity.
The expert direction, editing and photography are all here, along with two amazing performances. But this warped Adam and Eve myth is seriously hard to stomach.
Antichrist, by turns brilliant, by turns boring, is the most average horror film of the year.
Von Trier - a wind-up merchant par excellence - started off with an impressively disturbing vision of parental hell...but he just didn't know when to stop.
It seems like a glib joke on von Trier's part, as if he's daring us to engage with it on an intellectual level when really there's not much to engage with.
A garbled, appallingly misogynistic fantasy that makes little sense and plays like torture porn cloaked in artistic pretensions.
The film can expose you to nothing about life, nothing about film, while telling you more than you ever wanted to know about the director’s malicious vanity.
It's so outlandish that at times you wonder if Von Trier himself knows what's going on. It would not be surprising to learn that he's making it all up as he goes along.
Latest News for Antichrist
November 26, 2009:
Ban Them All! 10 Infamously Controversial Movies
Death, despair and genital mutilation: only a great Dane could fuse all three into one brilliantly bleak, guaranteed nausea-inducing piece of cinema... which seems to blame all... More...
November 23, 2009:
"I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
Danish auteur Lars von Trier is used to controversy following his films; some of his critics have even accused him of courting it for sensationalism and reaction. Yet even with... More...
October 22, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Astro Boy Doesn't Quite Soar
This week at the movies, we've got an anime hero (Astro Boy, with voice work from Kristen Bell and Nicolas Cage); a vampire war ( Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant,... More...
October 12, 2009:
Lars von Trier Blasts Off for Planet Melancholia ![]()
Fresh from grossing everyone out with "Antichrist," Lars von Trier has announced that his next project will be a "psychological disaster film" titled "Planet Melancholia." More...
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