Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
It will be a shock to no one who reads this blog with any regularity that I am a fan of Guillermo del Toro. That said, it’s worth noting that del Toro has a much better track record as a director than he does as a producer. If you remove his own directorial efforts from his producing and executive producing roles, it’s much more hit or miss. On the one hand, you get a masterpiece like El Orfanato and on the other, you get Mama. Sadly, Antlers falls more on the Mama side of the scale both in terms of overall quality and to a disturbing degree in terms of the overall story.
Antlers is a new spin on the Wendigo myth. We start with what feels like a poem in Ojibwa that seems to talk about something like a vengeful spirit arising because of the destruction of the environment. That, we will soon learn, is the Wendigo of the story. Or that’s the idea. In truth, our Wendigo doesn’t really seem to have a particularly serious environmental bent to it. This may be the cause of its arrival, but it’s not like the creature is specifically hunting down corporate executives dumping toxic waste into Oregon’s water tables or greedy lumber company bosses.
