This Review is brought to you by Mary Cox
ANTLERS needs a good poke
If you go to a horror show you want to be scared to death not bored to death! In this awesomely terrible movie with a script that has holes so big you can drive through it you can’t help but wonder how this movie ever got made. It starts out dark and gets darker but not better.
In an isolated Oregon town, a middle-school teacher, Julie Meadows, (Keri Russell), and her brother Paul, the local sheriff, (Jesse Plemons) become embroiled with her troubled student, Lucas Weaver, (Jeremy T. Thomas) whose dark secrets lead to encounters with a legendary ancestral creature who eats people.
Spoiler alert: this movie does nothing to suspend my disbelief. First, the Oregon Child Welfare removes children from their homes at a higher rate and returns them to foster care more often than the national average and they would have been all over this situation where both a teacher and the doctor who examines Lucas recognizes physical abuse.
Two, we have no idea why this monster exists and why it eats people. Three, Julie was abused by her father when she was young and fled her home, but it is just out there. We have no idea why she came back to Oregon from California and that is totally irrelevant to the story but is never fully explained.
The casting is ludicrous. Keri Russell and Jesse Plemons are no more alike physically than oranges and bananas. It would make more sense if they were married instead of siblings. Academy Award nominee Amy Madigan is Principal Ellen Booth and Academy Award nominee Graham Greene is Warren Stokes, the retired Sheriff. I would have enjoyed seeing more of them and a lot less of the monster and kids. What a waste of an excellent cast of actors. All I could think of when I watched the film is that they must have been desperate for money to agree to act in “Antlers.”
This piece of nonsense was directed by Scott Cooper and the script was poorly written by Cooper, Nick Antosca, and Henry Chaisson.
Generally, a movie is tied together in the denouement (the last 10 minutes of the movie). “Antlers” has more loose ends than fringe on a rug. The best thing I can say about this film is that it is only 99 minutes long.
If you like horror movies or psychological thrillers go see “Last night in Soho” and avoid this film like the plague. I think this film owes me several stars because I can’t give it any. It is currently playing in Edwardsville.
MATINEE CHAT with Kathy Kaiser 