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.
Comment
07/16/09
Antichrist (2009)
50
%
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... [More]
Reviews for Antichrist
Top CriticA garbled, appallingly misogynistic fantasy that makes little sense and plays like torture porn cloaked in artistic pretensions.
07/28/09
Antichrist is a horrible combination of extraordinarily unpleasant elements. It's offensively misogynistic. It's needlessly graphic in its use of violence. And its maker almost certainly needs psychiatric help.
07/24/09
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.
07/24/09
This is cinema at its most extreme and mind-boggling.
05/18/09
Top CriticThe problem with Antichrist is not that it is bloody or attention-seeking, though it is clearly both. It is that from a thought-provoking premise it says absolutely nothing about grief, its two protagonists or the human condition.
07/24/09
What Lars is driving at is something completely bizarre, massively uncommercial and strangely perfect.
05/18/09
Top CriticAntichrist 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.
07/24/09
Antichrist is a smirking contraption of a film, a cheeky, nasty, clever device for making us upset about the dead kid, making us scared at the creepy happenings, making us freaked out at the violence, and finally making us convulsed with liberal outrage.
07/24/09
Top CriticIt'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.
07/24/09
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.
07/24/09
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.
07/24/09
Antichrist, by turns brilliant, by turns boring, is the most average horror film of the year.
07/24/09
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.
07/28/09
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.
07/24/09
Some von Trier fans will welcome his return to the elaborate visual invention he abandoned with the founding of Dogme. But in the wider world, Antichrist will prove too loopy and coarse for art-house audiences.
05/18/09
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.
07/16/09
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.
07/24/09
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.
07/24/09
The gruesome nature of what follows is best avoided by those of a delicate disposition.
07/24/09
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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