Antichrist

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Possibly the best argument against couples therapy ever, Antichrist is a tour-de-force trip inside the mind of a dangerously depressed man. That man is Danish filmmaker von Trier, and he has gone on record as having conceived and executed Antichrist in the wake of a deep depression.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Very few actors would have the courage to allow von Trier to put them through what Dafoe and Gainsbourg experienced in the name of art.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Like a nightmare you recall during waking hours, and then only in its vast outlines, Antichrist has the power to haunt beyond words. For better and for worse, it is exactly the movie von Trier wanted to make and a piece of staggeringly pure cinema.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

I’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.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Antichrist is a boldly personal film, tossing all von Trier’s ideas about faith, fear, and human nature into an unfettered phantasmagoria, full of repulsive visions and fierce scorn. It’s also the most lush-looking movie von Trier has made in about 20 years.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Taken as a whole, Antichrist is a gorgeous, mesmerizing construction, and almost every one of its frames shimmers with demented, imaginary life... It 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.

Empire Kim Newman

A star rating is not much help, since von Trier’s self-conscious arrogance is calculated to split audiences into extremist factions, but Antichrist delivers enough beauty, terror and wonder to qualify as the strangest and most original horror movie of the year.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

I can’t deny this is filled with powerfully primal images, but at least one of them--an eviscerated fox that bellows at Dafoe, “Chaos reigns!”­--made me burst out laughing.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

By turns repellent, powerful and ludicrous, Antichrist piles horror on horror with pitiless passion.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

There’s a lot of hate in this film. But a lot of talent, too. It borders on despicable, but you can’t ignore it.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Calvin Wilson

Tests the loyalty of fans that may expect his work to be extreme, but not to such an extent.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Bottom line: Do I recommend Antichrist? Tough to do, but tough not to. For those who are intrigued by the controversy, it may be worth the sacrifice, if only so you can evaluate it from a position of knowledge.

The Hollywood Reporter Peter Brunette

Visually gorgeous to a fault and teeming with grandiose if often fascinating ideas that overwhelm the modest story that serves as their vehicle, this may be the least artistically successful film von Trier has ever made.

NPR Mark Jenkins

For a hymn to panic and hostility, the movie is curiously artful. But only the most sympathetic viewers will find that its poetry outweighs its belligerence.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

For 70 minutes, Antichrist is a rare exploration of pain, featuring two actors collaborating with each other in agonizing and intimate ways. It also contains some of the best work Gainsbourg has ever done on screen. And then - if I put it more gently I wouldn't really be saying it - director Lars von Trier loses his mind.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Antichrist finally embodies the contradiction of von Trier: He's a gifted, even visionary, artist mired in his own pulp pretentiousness.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

The trouble is that Antichrist feels progressively symptomatic of a director losing heart.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Depending on your reaction to the cinematic outrages perpetrated by Danish director Lars von Trier (remember Dogville?), you might want to add or subtract two stars from the halfway (half-assed?) rating I just gave Antichrist.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

It would be a shock if Antichrist had turned out to be anything but shocking.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The trouble is, it's all too exhibitionistic to ring true. The impotent folly of Antichrist is that von Trier has made it his mission to shock the bourgeoisie in an era when they can no longer be shocked.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Antichrist, which, above all, wants to make pain visceral, is less successful at projecting authentic experience--the shock tactics are ultimately numbing.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Allegorical in the worst ways, Antichrist is about as profound as a slasher movie.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Von 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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The scandal of Antichrist is not that it is grisly or upsetting but that it is so ponderous, so conceptually thin and so dull.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with Antichrist. As if deliberately courting critical abuse, the Danish bad boy densely packs this theological-psychological horror opus with grotesque, self-consciously provocative images.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Antichrist is probably the most disturbing, bleak and self-indulgent film ever made.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

I'm ripping up my Lars Von Trier fan club card.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville") has no barriers, which absolutely can be a good thing. Here, though, his uninhibited nature is an omen of the pretentious butchery to come.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

Female sexuality has evolved into pure evil here with Von Trier looking ever so much like the Marquis de Sade of filmmaking.

Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf

The new movie is a joke, a toxic cocktail of banal psychobabble, laughably arty slo-mo flourishes and unmotivated sexual violence that only brain-in-jar types could take as a serious statement.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

If only von Trier could work beyond the poster art concept. Antichrist stubbornly fails as a gothic nightmare and meanders as a misanthropic two-character drama.

Slate Dana Stevens

The last 20 minutes are horrifically violent, relentlessly claustrophobic, and irredeemably pointless. Von Trier has us on the hot seat, and he's going to walk us through his most primitive sexual nightmares--not because they'll bring us to a greater understanding of madness or love or grief, but just because he bloody well feels like it.