Anti-Christ - What in the hell?

I am a horror movie nut. I've seen just about every substantial horror film ever made - everything from Freaks to Bloodsucking Freaks - but nothing quite prepared me for Anti-Christ. Here we have a sick, twisted combination of Hour of the Wolf and Hostel, and that's exactly what I'd call Lars Von Trier's new film - the mashing of Ingmar Bergman's psychological approach to character - especially those of a feuding married couple - with Eli Roth's trenchant use of sadistic violence. Throw in some of the most effective horror music since Stanley Kubrick scared me out of my rocking chair in my youth, and we have here what I'd deem an endurance test.

There are images in this film I will not soon forget, although I'd like to. Images of carnal lust turned to violence, of metaphoric animals feasting on themselves, of a baby falling to its death. Two particular images have left scars on my brain I should seek counseling to heal - a scene of masturbation resulting in ejaculated blood, and a scene of self-mutilation in which I actually shielded my eyes - not quite believing I was actually seeing what I was seeing. It was a special effect, yes, but should any moviegoer, seeking some form of entertainment, have to witness such a thing?

Anti-Christ is the story of a married couple whose only child falls to its death while they are making passionate love in the same room. We later find out the wife watched the child climb onto the windowsill, and could very well have saved it. The husband was unaware, so consumed was he by his passion. The characters are given no names, and are labeled only He and She. Whatever. He is a psychiatrist, She is an artist. She has been doing a study on whether or not women are inherently evil creatures placed on this earth to ruin men's lives, or whatever. She is devastated by their child's death, and driven into a coma, and, afterwards, into fits of hysterical crying and psychological self-destruction. He decides, in lieu of institutionalization, to address her fears head on, and asks her what most frightens her. One of the things she names is the log cabin they have in the middle of the woods, so He takes She there.

From the moment they get to the cabin in the woods, the film turns quite surreal. The music is menacing, the sound effects come loud and fast - the same kind of jump-out-and-get-you sound effects your common, everyday household horror movie employs, but to enhanced effect here, because we're not in Kansas anymore - or at Crystal Lake, or on Elm Street, or in Texas - we're not in Boo! Gotcha! Wow, it's fun being scared territory - no, we're in Unrated, non-studio horror movie territory here - and all bets are off.

The smaller details begin to add up, until everything seems to have a sinister purpose - the moist, rotten wooden walls of the cabin, the rusted tin roof, the dense, creeping foliage of the surrounding woods, the thick fog. The acorns raining down on the roof at night - sounding at first like meteors, then like the pounding hooves of demons. The forrest creatures - a fox, a deer, a crow - first representing just what they are, then taking on additional meaning as He and She bear down on each other.

On some level, it was a pleasure to watch a horror film that I knew had intelligence and weight behind it. Lars Von Trier is no dummy to what tortures we inflict on each other, and with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, he has two gifted actors who are more than willing, it seems, to throw themselves into any given situation. I can only imagine what lesser actors would have been willing to do, and what Von Trier would have been left with. (Nothing.)

On another level, it was abusive for me to sit through this film, because on no level was it entertaining. Roger Ebert wrote a review a number of years ago - for what film, I cannot remember - in which he said at one point that he considered leaving the theatre, so taxed was he by the psychological burden impressed upon the characters. I felt the same way throughout this film - that I wasn't so much watching it as enduring it. I guess that's the difference between a good horror film and a film in any other genre - you are not watching a horror film, you are having it happen to you. More here than in any other case, you are putting yourself in the protagonist's shoes, asking "What would I do? What can I do?"

In the case of Anti-Christ, I wanted to get the hell out of there - to leave the theatre, to take a stroll on the beach, or even down a dark street at night in the fog - to be anywhere but in that woods anymore with those horrible creatures, and all the harm they were doing to each other - both real and psychological.

I guess you could say this film affected me. I guess that means it's successful. That doesn't mean it's entertaining. Leaving the theatre, a friend of mine commented, "I don't know why I put myself through that." My sentiments exactly.