*Throws Up*

Anyone whose paid attention to the Cannes Film Festival in May or always observes Willem Dafoe's (Platoon, Spider-Man, Last Temptation of Christ) ever eclectic filmography, you've heard of the Antichrist. The Lars Von Trier film that stirred up quite the controversy at the awards for supposedly horrifying images of gore and perversion. What I was thinking; this I gotta see.

So I did. And I saw. The movie was...a shock to say the least. The first 3/4 of the film are slightly slow, but mounting in horror, with limited score but plenty of haunting imagery to help rack up the fear in the viewer (kudos to the film editor). As well as an opening montage that well, there's no other way to describe it- Willem Dafoe fucking the shit out of Charlotte Gainsborough. Why do I use such terminology? Because I think that's what Lars was attempting to convey. They weren't making love at that time, no love was created only destroyed. Plus the wording is naughty- HEE HEE.

The final act of the movie is punctuated by some brutal, graphic violence. I don't want to get into it but some erm, important appendages were lost. The verdict? Guilt is a very personal, very malleable and very dark and disturbing thing, like a blind, mutilated cobra, striking with its hate filled fangs what it feels needs to be struck, not what it sees. Doesn't make much sense huh? Watch the movie and you'll see.

Charlotte Gainsborough takes over the movie, holding herself together but her acts and expressions shows that she is too discheveled to recreate, and she's well aware, and in the last act, she gives in. Breathtaking, take-charge, experienced, pinpoint work here. And Willem? Good ol' Willem? Reliable as ever as the calm, apathetic mediator, whose guilt is shown in a more quiet, arguably positive way.

Now to the violence. Shock is a very important part of cinema. Every few years a movie comes a long where a style is so different, so affecting, so inspired, so drastically obvious in its use of outside of the box thinking- that the only word that can describe it are shock. Or alternatively, when an aspect of the film is handled in such a way that divides critics and fans alike. Movies that are still talked about today. The violence in this movie is irregardably detestable, not unlike that of the violence in modern horror movies (didn't name any names...like the Saw series...bitches) however even in the blood soaked conflict a sense of meaning can be salvaged.

...in other words I'm not sure what Antichrist is to me. Will it join the ranks of movies such as Fight Club and Reservoir Dogs, as movies that are still topics of discussion among audiences and critics? Or was it just another movie that took it too far. Whichever it was, I liked Antichrist. Do I advise you too see it? Hell no.

B/B+