In an Oregon refinery town, an old mine is set to be reopened to help revive the fading coal industry.  Still showing the scars of being stripped of resources, a malevolent spirit is unleashed by mother nature and wreaks havoc on the small community. 

Antlers, directed by genre-hopper Scott Cooper and produced by Guillermo del Toro among others, is a modern folk horror inspired by an indigenous legend.  In addition to the scares, the film also takes a crack at exploring different themes such as the importance of conservationism and patterns of domestic abuse.  It’s handling of these heavy yet important topics is not always well executed and would be improved with both additional focus and subtlety in the script.  For what it lacks in nuance, however, it makes up for in craft behind the camera as Cooper frames his shots well giving us just enough to see to be unnerved as he slowly brings tension to a boil. 

The film operates best on a simple monster movie plot, but to try and either add intrigue or pad the runtime, it relies on dishing out small details about some of the characters’ past in a labored way that is frustrating to watch as they dance around the point of what they are trying to say to keep some air of mystery alive.  Through this approach, we learn about the past of Julia Medows (Keri Russell), a schoolteacher who faced abuse growing up at the hands of her father.  She has moved back home to live with her brother, Paul (Jesse Plemons), who is also the sheriff of the town.  

The dynamic here is interesting if you can ignore the questionable, smalltown professional ethics.  The two have decent chemistry as survivors of shared trauma and while the film does not need to create a watertight rebuke of abuse, its constant allusions would translate better if they were either explored more deeply or left out entirely.  It is also nice that this is a familiar relationship instead of romantic, though towards the end it seems maybe earlier drafts had opted for a more romantic pairing given some of the exchanges between the two characters.  It is not so jarring to be distracting, but it does seem like an additional edit would have helped define the relationship more clearly.  

The main dynamic of Antlers, though, revolves around the relationships between Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas), a twelve-year-old boy who lives with his father Frank (Scott Haze) and his younger brother Aiden (Sawyer Jones) after his mother has passed.  Lucas carries a huge burden in the film as he has the most interaction with the creature and has to contend with the tired creepy kid tropes.  He does a decent job at navigating the narrative and is really effective at making us care for him and the monsters that are haunting him, though the ultimate limits of his connection with the creature are left ambiguous.   

As for the monster, it takes a long time before it takes on its final form which is one of the stronger parts of the film.  Cooper knows that often times the most terrifying things are what we don’t see, so he hints at the true form of the beast in the latter half of the film allowing us to fill in and imagine what he purposefully obscures.  When the creature finally does make its grand appearance, the effects are all well-executed, and it seems like it is truly a part of the world of the film.  There are plenty of shadows that help, but it is never so obscured that we don’t get a few good long looks at the terrifying creature.  Coupled with the truly upsetting drawings in Lucas’ notebook and the boy’s overall demeanor and actions, Antlers flirts constantly with our discomfort at what we are watching keeping us engaged so that it can unsettle us again.  

The atmosphere of the film is incredibly creepy and what really drives it forward. In addition to the drawings in the notebook, Cooper incorporates many touchstones of the genre which all create a dreadful and dangerous atmosphere. For instance, the sound design surrounding the heavily bolted door in Lucas’ house – something we return to multiple times – feels and sounds heavy and every time the latch closes shut we feel the sound echo in our gut.

As the investigation into the strange occurrences continues, Paul and Julia meet with Warren Stokes (Graham Greene) who can shed some light on the demon that is using their town as a hunting ground.  Its adherence to legend and its modern twist on what resource greed looks like in the 21^st century is very engaging, and while the script often hints at these themes, it does not explore them as deeply as the story seems to keep leaning towards.  The script tries to tackle too many big ideas instead of sticking to one to singular thesis to dissect and examine which is its greatest weakness. It would have been nice to get more about the monster as the production design hints at it – the medicine bags, the strange carving – but it is understandable that Cooper shied away from going too deep into the lore as not only is it a modernization of the legend, but the oral tradition which handed the story down has its own host of variances. 

The climax of the film is the biggest example of the unfocused narrative as it does not know if it wants to be Lucas’ story or Julia’s.  Regardless, it still is exciting, even if entirely too short.  It would have been nice to see how the monster’s physicality could interact with the environment and create some more problems for our heroes to solve, but for what it is, Antlers serves to satisfy.