Antichrist (Lars Von Trier, 2009)

Von Trier has stated that this protracted nightmare arose from his continuing battles with depression, and Antichrist certainly manages to ferry the viewer to the land of the unwell with some panache. Viewed as a psychological horror film, its air of looming menace is leagues ahead of the slasher pack. Viewed as a dissertation on the disabling effects of grief, it's far less effective, as Charlotte Gainsbourg's bereaved mother gets increasingly hysterical and takes it out with escalating severity on her psychiatrist husband, Willem Dafoe. It's not that her delusional mania is unfeasible per se as a depiction of mental illness brought on by trauma, it's just that it's difficult to see the loss of a child as the catalyst for not only the self-loathing but also the misandry that follow. In seeking to communicate his blackest moods, Von Trier seems to have chosen the wrong narrative vehicle.
Then there's also his familiar and unresolved preoccupation with women as victims, though here Gainsbourg's character has in effect become her own victim, and that in turn raises an uncomfortable air of women seen as both ultimately unfathomable and prey to insanity in their vulnerability.
Overall, Antichrist is best taken without concessions to whatever red herrings of psychological analysis Von Trier may dangle before us, and with a refusal to read any more than a habitual provocateur's brief to shock into the scenes where he starts mutilating his actors. It works beautifully as eerie, satanically tinged horror, the performances scarily committed and the photography in particular of exceptional nuance and vividity.

6/10