Thursday 16 September 2010

Anyone out there seen ‘Antichrist’?

It’s not very often I start watching a movie and have to turn it off. However, last night I started watching Antichrist and did just that.

The movie opened with some pretty graphic sex. I’m no prude, but if I had been watching the movie with anyone else it would have raised some eyebrows. The sex scenes were spliced with scenes of a small boy climbing out of a cot. You know something bad is going to happen to the boy, and the cinematography seems to be building towards the bad thing happening because the couple are too busy screwing each others brains out.

Here I turned over. Sitting, alone, with two small children (one of which was in a cot) upstairs, I just couldn’t bring myself to watch something horrible happening to the little boy. So I gave it five minutes and switched back again.

All that seemed to happen from that point on was the mother losing the plot and the husband  acting as her shrink, trying to get her to accept her grief.  He didn’t show any kind of grief himself, and she just  kept gradually losing her mind (as any mother would after losing a child).  There was lots more sex, and I got a bit sick of watching Willem Defoe’s arse bouncing up and down – however much I like him as an actor.

In the end I gave up and switched it off. It was just too depressing, too dark, too arty. It felt as though it was just trying to hard to be controversial.

So, my question is this: Did I do the right thing?  Has anyone else seen the movie who can vouch for its amazing ending? I hate to give up on anything – even something as trivial as a film!

I would love to hear anyone’s feedback. Let me know if you’ve seen it and actually made it through to the end!

2 comments:

  1. I dont like watching kids get hurt in movies, I know it's acting but I just can't watch it. :( And I hate graphic sex in movies. I am not a prude either. I just don't like it. I would have turned it off to.

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  2. Yeah, I can't watch the kid thing. You can do pretty much whatever you want to adults in horror movies, but bring children or animals into it and I just don't want to watch!

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