If you'd like to be surprised by the Antlers film, I don't recommend you to watch the trailer beyond 0:20, because it starts to give away parts of the plot. It basically provides a summary of the film, up to the ending scene, it's only the very end we are not shown.
Antlers, movie (2021) - Watch the trailer on YouTube
video © Twentieth Century Fox (Disney) & TSG Entertainment (The Seelig Group)
Article updated: 2023.12.09
The Antlers (2021) is a contemporary fantasy / supernatural horror film. The movie was reviewed by Kadmon.
Product: Antlers, movie (2021)
Original title: Antlers
Series: -
Setting: contemporary fantasy Earth
Product type: Film, Genre: contemporary fantasy / supernatural horror, Features: fantasy, contemporary fantasy, horror, supernatural horror, creatures
Release: Premiere: 2021.10.11 (Beyond Fest), Release: 2021.10.28
Reviewer: Kadmon, Type: Male, 40s, Preferences: Immersive, logical story, consistent setting, prefers surprises to spoilers, prefers establishing elements before referencing them
Watched: very recent (2021.12), first time
Rating: Good (2+ out of 3 points), Enjoyment: Good (2+ out of 3 points)
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This is my review of Antlers, a contemporary fantasy / supernatural horror movie from 2021. It's about a teacher trying to help a boy, who has problems due to his father. The Antlers film is interesting, I recommend it.
Antlers, movie (2021)
image © Twentieth Century Fox (Disney) & TSG Entertainment (The Seelig Group)
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Review (spoiler-free) - Antlers, movie (2021)
I didn’t know anything about Antlers, before finding it among the recent releases. The cover and the tagline looked interesting. I didn’t watch the trailer.
The Antlers movie is about a teacher trying to help a boy, who has problems due to his father.
The story is good. The pacing is consistent. There is a character arc for the main character. I didn’t find any logical problems.
The cinematography is good. The scenes are interesting visually.
We get plenty of information about the backgrounds of the characters during the movie. The actors are okay.
The music (by Javier Navarrete) is good. Sometimes it’s unnerving, but that fits the mood of this story.
Antlers is an interesting contemporary fantasy / supernatural horror, I think fans of the genre will enjoy it.
My experience
I was satisfied with Antlers (2021).
Rating: Good (2+ out of 3 points). Antlers is a well-made film.
Enjoyment: Good (2+ out of 3 points). Antlers is interesting, I liked it.
Rewatchability: I'm not sure. I think it's mostly the surprise of the story that makes you feel interested.
Chance of watching it again: Probably not. Now that I know the story, I think there's no need to watch it again.
Chance of watching a sequel: High. I'd sure watch it.
Antlers, movie (2021)
image © Twentieth Century Fox (Disney) & TSG Entertainment (The Seelig Group)
Will you enjoy this?
If you like mystery or horror movies, you might like Antlers.
If you like stories about the wendigo, you might be interested in Antlers.
If you hate subtitles, there’s only the prologue that’s subtitled, so you’ll survive that.
If you prefer visuals over story, this movie is probably not for you.
If you hate wendigo movies, you should avoid this.
Do you need to read the original short story to enjoy this?
The movie explains everything you need to know.
Watching for plot points
If you are interested in creature movies, I think it's worth watching the Antlers movie for the plot points.
Should you watch this on your own screen at home, or is it worth going to the cinema?
The visuals would probably look better if you watch it in a cinema, but I think the overall experience would be similar.
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Antlers, movie (2021)
image © Twentieth Century Fox (Disney) & TSG Entertainment (The Seelig Group)
Review with spoilers - Antlers, movie (2021)
I liked the Antlers movie.
Cover
The cover of the movie is good, it raises interest, but it doesn't spoil the movie.
The trailer
The trailer is basically a substitute for watching the movie.
If you prefer spoilers, it's a great trailer for the Antlers film. If you prefer to avoid spoilers, it will ruin the movie for you.
Promise of the first scene
The prologue is about a malevolent spirit being risen due to the humans using up the resources of the Earth, who seeks the lost, the frail and the depraved. I assume we’ll see lost, frail and depraved people getting attacked by a malevolent spirit, until someone defeats it with special native American magic.
The first scene reinforces this impression.
Execution: Well, we got something like that. I consider this promise fulfilled.
Plot summary / Synopsis
The prologue tells about a malevolent spirit.
A kid (Sawyer Jones as Aiden Weaver) plays outside, while his father (Scott Haze as Frank Weaver) works in a mine with an associate on probably illegal things (Edit: A meth lab, according to WikiPedia). They are attacked by a creature. The kid is called, and he goes inside the mine.
Three weeks later: There’s a female teacher (Keri Russell as Julia Meadows) who works in a school in Cispus Falls, Oregon. The teacher goes home. She lives with her brother (Jesse Plemons as Paul Meadows), who is a policeman. She was born here, then lived in California for a while, and moved back here not long ago, after the suicide of her father. She was abused as a child by their father.
There’s the other son of the father, a boy (Jeremy T. Thomas as Lucas Weaver) in the class, who gets taunted by bully. The boy kills a skunk on his way home. The boy seems to be living alone, but at night, there are some noises from inside a locked door.
In school, the boy reads a scary story he wrote as homework, about a family of bears, getting evil and hungry. He puts the skunks head in the bag of the bully. The bully beats him up. The teacher tries to reach the father on phone, but it turns out he is the one locked inside in the boy’s home. The teacher talks to the boy. The teacher visits the boy’s home, and finds the door open, but nobody answers to her.
On his way home, the boy finds the carcass of a racoon. He prepares it for his savage looking father and kid brother, who are locked away. His father is still hungry, so he sets traps in the woods. While out there, he sees a man finding the body of a human.
At home the teacher has a vision of her father, starting to fondle her. Next day, she searches the boy’s desk in school, and finds disturbing drawing. She insists to the principal that these are the signs of abuse.
The body in the woods (belonging to the father’s associate) is being reported, so the police inspect it. They find human bite marks on it.
The school principal visits the house of the boy, and opens the locked door. She gets killed by the father. After he tastes human flesh, antlers grow out of his mouth.
The boy is approached by the bully in the woods, who intends to take revenge, but he is attacked by a creature with antlers. The boy runs home to find his father and brother gone. Then he cleans up the house.
They start to look for the missing school principal. The teacher tells the police that the school principal wanted to talk to the father of the boy. They search the place and find her body. They also find something that remained from the body of the father.
We see a flashback about the father, realising how sick he is, locking himself in, asking the boy not to open the door. Then, when his kid brother also fell sick, he was locked away with the father.
They talk to a native American man, who tells them he thinks it’s a wendigo, a cannibal spirit.
They find the body of the bully, partially eaten.
The teacher decides to take the boy to their own home. She tries to tell him that his father died, but the boy tells her that only his old father died, who was sick, and the new father, who lives in the mine, will love him if he feeds him. The policeman guarding the house gets killed by the creature. The boy runs away. The teacher’s brother is also attacked by the creature. The creature then leaves.
The teacher puts a bandage on her brother, and they go to the mine, to find the boy. They find them, and the teacher defeats the creature with the help of the boy. Then the kid brother of the boy starts to change into the creature, so she kills him too.
In the last scene we see that the teacher’s brother caught the sickness from his wound.
The setting
Antlers is set on contemporary fantasy Earth, where supernatural beings exist.
Antlers, movie (2021)
image © Twentieth Century Fox (Disney) & TSG Entertainment (The Seelig Group)
The creature: Wendigo
It takes a horn stab by the wendigo to cause the infection. The first signs are coughing up black liquid, and black liquid flowing from the eyes. The infected will start to become more and more savage. Also, their heart starts to burn. When they first taste human flesh, they transform into a full fledged creature, leaving their human remains behind, as if they were moulting. The full fledged wendigo is a quadruped creature, but it can probably stand on its hind legs. Its head is full of antlers.
In order to kill the creature, its burning heart must be cut it, when it’s in a weakened state. When its body is killed, the spirit flies into the next infected body.
Where the wendigo walks, embers fly away from the burning heart in its chest.
The message of the story
Love beats everything. Unless your father turns into a monster, then a good knife beats everything.
The structure of the story
The scenes of the Antlers film are mostly played in sequence, following the same storyline. There is one flashback scene.
There is no single viewpoint character.
It has the usual arc of the dramatic structure - introduction, action, resolution. It ends with the possibility of a sequel.
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Things I liked
- I liked the look of the creature. Especially when it still had the father’s face on.
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How does it compare to the other works of the creators?
From the writer (C. Henry Chaisson), I haven't seen anything else, but Antlers was good.
From the writer (Nick Antosca), I haven't seen anything else, but now I'm interested in his works.
From the writer (Scott Cooper), I haven't seen anything else, but Antlers is promising.
From the director (Scott Cooper), I haven't seen anything else, but this was solid.
How does it compare to the original short story?
The short story is more focused and more bleak. The movie gives us glimpses into the gory aspects of the plot that the short story only implies.
The viewpoint character of the short story is the teacher, we only experience the events from her view. In the movie, we know from the beginning, what is the kid doing, taking away a part of the surprise. I prefer this kind of approach, although I understand why the movie creators decided against it, so they could pad the runtime. Otherwise, the story would have been max. 45 minites tops.
The short story ends with the protagonist dying, as the creatures take the kid. The movie has a happy ending, with the creatures defeated and the kid saved.
If you have read the original story, watching the movie probably won't give you extra entertainment. Reading the short story after watching the movie is probably just as unnecessary. If you are interested in the the story, and you have a shorter time, I recommend the short story.
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Antlers, movie (2021)
image © Twentieth Century Fox (Disney) & TSG Entertainment (The Seelig Group)
Analysis of the story - Antlers, movie (2021)
I liked the story, I didn't find any problems that would have prevented me from enjoying Antlers.
Problematic elements
Unanswered questions
- What happened to the original wendigo, who infected the father?
- Why did the boy decide to help the teacher against his own father?
- How did the kid come up with his drawings, that show things that didn’t happen yet, or things that happened in his absence?
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Possibilities of improvement
- I’m not sure we really need the “abused teacher” angle. It takes time away from the actual happenings. It does round out the character, but the main character is the boy.
- Cutting the movie to become a single viewpoint story, seen by the teacher, would probably make it more interesting.
How it could have been better?
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Behind the scenes
Thoughts about the reviews of others
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Antlers, movie (2021)
image © Twentieth Century Fox (Disney) & TSG Entertainment (The Seelig Group)
Uses for the film - Antlers, movie (2021)
Plot
- There’s a creature that can infect people, who mutate into creatures.
Scenes
Designs
Scenario ideas - Role-playing game scenario ideas
Scenario ideas - Wargame scenario ideas
Creature lair escape: By the time the team (researchers, spelunkers, scouts, tomb robbers, bootleggers) realises they are in the territory of a creature, they are deep in the labyrinthine caves. The creature player sets up the area. There are multiple exit points out of the playing area, at least one on every edge. The team members are deployed in the middle of the playing area. Then the creature player deploys the creature at one of the exit points. The team wins if more than half of their members leave the lair. The creature wins if it kills more than half of the team members.
Random map (harder for the team): When setting up the playing area, only the outlines are indicated first. Then the creature player sets up the middle of the area, where the team members will be deployed, and builds a route to an exit point on an edge. That will be the exit point where the creature enters. Then every time the team leaves the set up map, randomly draw a new section. If the creature leaves the map, the creature player can choose one to deploy.
Miniatures - 1/50-1/60 (28-32mm scale)
Civilians: Human-sized (S3) modern (advanced) human female / male civilian.
Wendigo: Large stag-like humanoid carnivore.
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Similar stories - Antlers, movie (2021)
Short stories
Nick Antosca: The Quiet Boy (2019): In a contemporary setting, a mysterious creature (wendigo) starts killing people. The short story this movie was based on.
Novels
Stephen King: Cycle of the Werewolf (1983): In a contemporary setting, a mysterious creature (werewolf) terrorises a small town.
Graphic novels
Movies
Dark Was the Night, movie (2014): In a contemporary setting, a mysterious creature (wendigo) terrorises a small town.
Silver Bullet (1985): In a contemporary setting, a mysterious creature (werewolf) terrorises a small town. Based on Cycle of the Werewolf novel.
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Frequently asked questions - Antlers, movie (2021)
What is the creature in Antlers?
The creature in the Antlers film is a wendigo.
Is the Antlers film based on a book or comics?
Yes, Antlers is based on the The Quiet Boy short story from Nick Antosca.
Is the Antlers film a remake or reboot?
No, the Antlers film is neither a remake nor a reboot.
Is there a post credit scene in Antlers? Does Antlers have end credit scenes?
No, there's no post credit scene in Antlers.
Where can I see Antlers? Where can I watch Antlers online? Is Antlers available on Netflix? Is Antlers on Amazon?
As of 2022.01.02, Antlers is available on Vudu.
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Resources - Antlers, movie (2021)
Official
Antlers Facebook page: Official website.
Searchlight Pictures: Antlers: Official article.
Information
IMDB: Antlers (2021): Database article.
WikiPedia: Antlers (2021 film): Database article.
Letterboxd: Antlers 2021: Database article.
Rotten Tomatoes: Antlers 2021: Database article.
Creation
: Concept art article.¤
https://www.fangoria.com/original/shane-mahan-antlers/
Reviews with no spoilers - Antlers film (2021)
: Review video about the Antlers film with no spoilers.¤
Reviews with spoilers - Antlers film (2021)
: Review article of the Antlers movie, with spoilers. Includes a very detailed plot summary.¤
Analysis - Antlers movie (2021)
: Analysis video, explaining the finale of Antlers.¤
https://1428elm.com/2021/10/29/antlers-ending-explained-what-happens-in-the-end/
https://screenrant.com/antlers-bravest-characters/
https://signalhorizon.com/movie-review-antlers-2021/
https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/antlers-2021-film-review-by-andrew-robertson
https://screenrant.com/antlers-movie-2021-release-date-delay-reason-explained-future/
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Buying the product - Antlers, movie (2021)
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Have you seen the Antlers film? How do you like the movie? Would you recommend it to others? Do you know reviews or resources you'd like to add? What further thoughts do you have about it? Tell your opinion in the comments!
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