Antlers; Grade: B-

Antlers takes place in a small town in Oregon, where a young boy by the name of Lucas (Jeremy T Thomas) uncovers a horrific incident done to his father in a mine. Following that horrific incident, Lucas appears to not only to be traumatized by the event but to also be hiding something. This isn’t any ole secret at hand, what this secret is will hunt and kill anyone on sight, causing havoc in small town.

Antlers has been on my radar for quite sometime now, was supposedly be a Spring release back in 2020… But you know how that story unfolded. A year and a half later Antlers finally released and ya know… It’s got some things to like.

The creature design with regards to the entity of this film I thought was pretty cool, it certainly made me unsettled and a little bit disturbed. It’s very weird once it finally transforms into it’s final form, but strangely enough it was a solid creepy design that could certainly have one having nightmares about it.

The story at hand was fairly written. I liked the whole myth aspect to the story, in a way it was kind of cool, especially within the theme of abuse and how when it spreads it can be described as a disease. Honestly the horror element was the best part of the entire film, it’s creates a very creepy atmosphere followed by as said earlier an effective entity at hand. There are a couple effective brutal death sequences at hand as well. Also found the performances to pretty good by Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, and especially Jeremy T Thomas I thought he had a great performance!

There’s a couple flaws within Antlers. The way the film tries to execute it’s theme was troublesome. Like the film literally shouts at the audience, as it repeats itself as to what the film was about. It could’ve been more tamed and not be so obvious, like I don’t need to have characters scream it out loud ten freaking times over. There are some blatant awful human logic in this film. Including a character going into a room, as the walls were covered with blood yet the character continues to go into the room… Like no, get out of that house and call the police. Of course the most baffling moment is when Lucas tries to explain why he feels the need to want to protect this entity, it not only doesn’t make any sense but the dialogue at hand was kind of atrocious.

Overall, Antlers was a decent film. I recommend checking this one out, I thought it was cool. -Mitch Smietana