Directed by Scott Cooper
Written Henry Chaisson, Scott Cooper, based on the short story “The Quiet Boy” by Nick Antosca
Starring Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Amy Madigan
Runtime: 1 hour 39 minutes
Rated R

By Audrey Callerstrom, Associate Editor and Staff Writer

Antlers, the fifth film from Scott Cooper (Hostiles), takes its time setting the stage, providing some subtle, and not so subtle, hints at what is happening in a small town in Oregon. We know that it was a mining town at some point. The coal mines and nearby factories remain empty. Many businesses are shuttered. A boarded up gas station is faded and decorated with graffiti. Residents line up outside at the local treatment center, presumably for meth and opioid addiction, next door to the town’s ice cream shop. Sheriff Paul Meadows (Jesse Plemons) self-medicates to cope with the trauma of his childhood and from his job. Paul’s sister, Julia (Keri Russell) has returned to her home town shortly following the death of their father. Julia tries to start over, teaching English at the town’s elementary school, but fails to engage her kids.

There is some joy in how and what the monster or entity or person is that plagues this town, so I’ll attempt to be as vague as possible. A young boy named Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas), appears malnourished, his clothes full of holes. He shares disturbing drawings, and tells the class a morbid story about a family of bears that become ill. The town knows of his father, an addict, but little else is known about the family. His mother is dead. His younger brother is… somewhere. Lucas is guarded and withdrawn. Julia knows the boy has seen loss and abuse, but doesn’t know to what extent.

The town – which goes unnamed – is surrounded by lush forests and bodies of water. There’s a clear juxtaposition of this beautiful landscape against the dilapidated town. Aside from the colors of the forest, everything else is muted in earth tones. The actors, intentionally, looked washed out and gray. The only bright colors you ever see are when people are cast in alternating blue and red lights from a cop car. There’s also some careful casting here. Neither Plemons nor Russell try to steal the show, or overact, as a pair of siblings who experienced a mutual trauma from their abusive father. Russell in particular looks like a real person with a closet full of limited items who does her own makeup. Those kinds of details keep you engaged in a story, unaware that you are a person sitting in a movie theater, watching people pretend to be other people.

There are some grotesque practical makeup effects here at play. Veins of blood that appear black, and rib cages that pulsate and glow, as if a powerful evil is about to burst. Scenes of gore that don’t linger. Cooper’s favorite shot, a recurrent one through the film, is of backlit person entering a doorway to a dark building. Each side of the frame is a dark wall, with the middle third showing the silhouette of the person. Antlers is careful not to bog down characters with too much exposition. We see, for example, Julia’s license plate says “California,” so she’s returned to her hometown pretty recently. But at one point, Paul also makes a comment about how things were different in California.

The film scratches the surface of bigger issues, like trauma, addiction, and poverty, but each is depicted in a careful way, not using clichés. The only underdeveloped element is local Native American Warren Stokes, portrayed by character actor Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves, The Green Mile). His sole purpose is for one scene where he explains the nature of the beast that’s plaguing the town. Otherwise, his character is silent and without any distinct characteristics. It would have been to the film’s advantage to either give Warren more story, or to find a way for Julia and Paul to find this information out on their own. Many scenes exist to reveal information, such as a brutal kill, to the characters. It can grow a little tedious to see people react to information we already know. And like many horror films, it knows where it wants to go, but not how it wants to end. Truthfully, that’s fine. This film is an effective slow build with an original setting and some sufficient scares and surprises within its final scenes.