Cultural Product – Film – Antichrist
Overall: This is an excellent film that does what it does very well. Unfortunately, what it does includes, at times, being painful to watch.
Pro: This is a von Trier film and has a lot of what you might expect: a generally dark tone, visually striking moments, great acting (Charlotte Gainsbourg won best actress), excellent dialogue and so on.
General Commentary: In the same way that Dancer in the Dark is a musical and a Von Trier film, and Melancholia is a sci-fi and a Von Trier film, and Dogville is a meta theatrical play (like Our Town), Antichrist is a horror film and a Von Trier film. Just as it does everything a Von Trier film should do, it also tries to do everything a horror film should do. Traditional genre elements like the sexuality = impending death link are present. There are scenes where a description of the action could equally describe what you see on a genre classic like The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, Blair Witch Project, or even Saw.
This is a very different film than Kill Bill, but its basically doing the same thing. A director with a distinctive style takes a “low” genre and makes a film with all the formal elements of that genre without making any compromises regarding their distinctive style of films. If you read a review of Antichrist that doesn’t mention Kill Bill (or something else like it) you can ignore it because the reviewer fundamentally doesn’t get what this film is doing.
Cons: I thought The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, and Blair Witch Project were all great films. I didn’t see Saw (or any of its sequels or imitators) because based on what I knew about it I didn’t expect to enjoy it. Unsurprisingly, the scenes which reminded me of movies I thought were good seemed good to me. The scenes which reminded me of a movie I skipped because I thought watching it would be painful were painful to watch.