Antichrist is a unique form of cruel and unusual punishment: an unrelenting orgy of graphic sex, violence and cynicism that also manages to be wildly pretentious.
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11/20/09
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Antichrist (2009)
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:12
Rotten:17
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: Gruesome, explicit and highly controversial; Lars Von Triers arthouse-horror, though beautifully shot, is no easy ride.
Rated: Not Rated
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:2008
Box Office: $228,568
Synopsis: Only two actors, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Defoe, inhabit the space of this supernatural thriller directed by Lars Von Trier. The stars play a couple who attempt to grieve for their dead... [More]
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Reviews for Antichrist
Top CriticSelf-loathing, mean, ugly and perfectly made, Antichrist is probably the best film ever that you'd recommend to absolutely no one.
11/13/09
Top CriticAntichrist ends up being more unnerving than it is terrifying, and a lot funnier than it's supposed to be.
11/13/09
Top CriticTo watch the Danish provocateur's new film is to experience unrelenting pain, shading into revulsion, while being inspired by his virtuoso command of the medium and sharp intelligence.
11/12/09
Top CriticVon Trier and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle use sumptuous black-and-white photography and saturated color. Few movies are as beautifully wrought as this.
11/06/09
Top CriticWhat is Von Trier trying to say?
10/30/09
Top CriticVon Trier has said he wanted to make a genre horror picture, but he couldn’t even come up with a decent metaphor: The climax is out of a Grade C hack-’em-up with people chasing each other through the woods with axes and knives.
10/26/09
Top CriticArtfully horrific but artificial and soulless.
10/23/09
Top CriticThe scandal of Antichrist is not that it is grisly or upsetting but that it is so ponderous, so conceptually thin and so dull.
10/23/09
Top CriticPlease don't take anything I've said to indicate that Antichrist isn't difficult to watch. It most certainly is, but as somebody (the Marquis de Sade, perhaps) once said: No pain, no gain.
10/23/09
Top CriticThough it's hard to deny the fierce purity of Gainsbourg's performance, Antichrist plays like an incoherent mix of Gothic horror claptrap and Bergmanesque power struggle. I was more bored and puzzled than shattered and provoked.
10/23/09
Top CriticThe movie's story and meaning are not mysterious but deliberately impenetrable, faint gestures in all directions, absent of artistic integrity, intellectual rigor or emotional significance.
10/23/09
Top CriticI can’t deny this is filled with powerfully primal images.
10/22/09
Top CriticBy turns repellent, powerful and ludicrous, Antichrist piles horror on horror with pitiless passion.
10/22/09
Top CriticI'm inclined to agree with a colleague who told me he could swing with Antichrist when it was simply unstable but couldn't go with it when it turned insane. It's a useful distinction. And yet the first hour...is pretty stunning.
10/22/09
Top CriticThe movie immerses itself in the darkest despair imaginable, blending dystopian porn with ghastly horror and graphic violence. But it's all done in a mundane, almost clinical way.
10/22/09
Top CriticFor better and for worse, it is exactly the movie von Trier wanted to make and a piece of staggeringly pure cinema. On at least one level, it’s also hateful.
10/22/09
Top CriticVon Trier, who has always been a provocateur, is driven to confront and shake his audience more than any other serious filmmaker -- even Bunuel and Herzog.
10/22/09
Top CriticIt offers more proof, if we need any, that von Trier is one of the most accomplished cinema artists of our time, and also perhaps the most deeply trapped in his own head.
10/21/09
Top CriticTo say that Antichrist is shocking would suggest that it's effective.
10/21/09
Top CriticLatest News for Antichrist
November 26, 2009:
Ban Them All! 10 Infamously Controversial Movies
Death, despair and genital mutilation: only a great Dane could fuse all three into one brilliantly bleak, guaranteed nausea-inducing piece of cinema... which seems to blame all... More...
November 23, 2009:
"I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
Danish auteur Lars von Trier is used to controversy following his films; some of his critics have even accused him of courting it for sensationalism and reaction. Yet even with... More...
October 22, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Astro Boy Doesn't Quite Soar
This week at the movies, we've got an anime hero (Astro Boy, with voice work from Kristen Bell and Nicolas Cage); a vampire war ( Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant,... More...
October 12, 2009:
Lars von Trier Blasts Off for Planet Melancholia 
Fresh from grossing everyone out with "Antichrist," Lars von Trier has announced that his next project will be a "psychological disaster film" titled "Planet Melancholia." More...
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