Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: David Amito, Michael Laicini
Starring: Nicole Tompkins, Rowan Smyth, A.J. Bond, Nathan Fleet, Brock Fricker, Assen Gadjalov
Meta-fictional scene setting has long been a part of horror’s playful
mien. From M.R. James impressing upon his gathered male students that
the ghost story he was to impart was in turn once told to him by the
narrative’s participant, to Mary Shelley popping up to say hello at the
start of The Bride of Frankenstein a few years later, all
the way to The Blair Witch Project’s various ingenious gimmicks; this negotiation of the fourth wall is
part and parcel of horror’s pleasure, wherein the storyteller is able to
reach across the screen or page and entice the audience further into
their fictional, uncanny shadows.
David Amito and Michael Laicini’s
Antrum (oh, alright,
Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, to give it its full title) takes such japery to an extreme, and
exhibits, in the manner of John Carpenter’s
Cigarette Burns (which gets a namecheck here) or Tim
Lucas’ wonderful 'Throat Sprockets' novel, a bedevilled film which will
seriously ruin the day of anyone foolhardy enough to watch it - yikes!
The things I do for The Waffler...
Opening with a convincing montage of old silents that feature vivid,
occulty imagery, we are privy to a portentous voiceover telling us about
this ‘Antrum’ film which surfaced from nowhere (Bulgaria) at some point
in the 1970s and then as quickly disappeared, not only because it was
just so fucking scary, but also due to its highly calamitous nature. It
is what Shudder would call a ‘Cursed Film’, with festival programmers
who dared to show Antrum in the ensuing decades coming a
cropper: as a result of screening it, one poor lad got stung by a
stonefish (?) and a cinema in Budapest went and caught on fire during a
screening. Real life bods who are loosely affiliated with the American
indie horror scene attest to the existence and ominous reputation of
Antrum. And then, after 10 minutes or so of this credibly presented
documentary fanfare, we witness this fabled film. Get startled,
yeah?
Except, to add injury to potential hermetic insult, this particular
print (the last surviving one, naturally) has been fiddled with at some
point by berserk celluloid vandals who have scratched witchy symbols
into the print and also, for some reason, intercut scenes from a
decidedly less innocent flick into the narrative. Because, as a
standalone film, the main Antrum storyline is a sweet
natured '70s set fairy-tale, featuring a young boy, Nathan (Rowan Smyth), and his teen sister Oralee (Nicole Tompkins) journeying into
the woods to dig a hole. The little boy’s dog has died, and, in the
film’s most unsettlingly creepy moment, when he asks his mom about the
whereabouts of the dog’s soul, he is told "Maxine isn’t in heaven
because she was bad" (brrrrrr!). Oralee has made up a story (an early indication of narrative
determinism) about the forest being the place where Satan fell to earth,
and that if they dig a hole on the exact spot where the Shining One
landed then they can rescue Maxine’s soul from Hell - awwww.
This part of the film is shot using that lovely, buttery light which
characterises this sort of vintage horror, and the soundtrack is made up
of intense and originally deployed ambient noise, which makes it rather
remarkable to look at and listen to. The actors are utterly superb too,
inhabiting not only convincing roles as protagonists but as archetypes
of a type of horror which existed far before either of them were even
born.
Along the way artfully scraped sigils pop up on the screen, and there
are subliminal transitions of a horrible black and white snuff film
(think the sort of weird thing that is faked on YouTube and pored over
on Reddit. Apparently, it is rumoured that certain viewers have also
seen a dark faced demon interrupting the narrative at a certain point,
staring at you for a good minute or so while silently whispering your
name, giving credence to the claim that Amato and Laicini are actually
Satanic agents who are playing a long con with Antrum’s deliberately amateurish approach in order to lull the viewer into
false security to allow their Dark Lord and Master full uninhibited
access to your soul. I didn’t see anything, though. Perhaps you
might...).
The orphic static is, however, distinctly less interesting than the
abiding storyline of Nathan and Oralee trapped in a reverse Eden as they
face creeping dark shadows, strange noises and, ugh, beastial hick
cannibals who worship Baphomet and try to Hansel and Gretel our intrepid
heroes. Never mind the devil, there is eerie poetry here in the obtuse
angles of the camera, the Krzysztof Komeda-esque soundtrack, the weird
echoes of the forest (including, in one inspired moment, the kids
‘hearing’ the hitherto non-diegetic score).
The overall experience of Antrum, however, is like when someone prefaces a joke with a massive lead up:
telling you how funny the joke is, how funny they found the joke, how
much you’re going to find the joke funny, etc, before finally telling
you the actual joke. What joke ever could overcome such manufactured
expectations? Ultimately Antrum
suffers from a similarly self-defeating hyperbole - it isn’t nearly as
frightening or unsettling as the framing device promises. I mean, my
house didn’t even burn down while I was watching it! The shame is that
it didn’t need to be, and, on its own merits, the ‘Maxine’ narrative is
quite arresting, replete with beguiling folkloric touches and striking
performances. The ‘deadliest film ever made’? It’s probably not even the
deadliest film released this month. But don’t let that blind you to
Antrum’s buried charms.
Antrum is on Shudder UK
now.