Antlers

DIRECTOR SCOTT COOPER

RELEASE DATE 17 APRIL

STARRING

KERI RUSSELL, JESSE PLEMONS, JEREMY T. THOMAS, GRAHAM GREENE, AMY MADIGAN

CERTIFICATE 15 TBC

RUNNING TIME TBC

“ONCE, THERE WERE THREE BEARS THAT LIVED IN A DARK, WET CAVE UP ABOVE A SMALL TOWN. Every day, Little Bear went to school, and at night he would come home and eat dinner. But one day, Little Bear came home, and Big Bear and Baby Bear were different,” says Lucas, played by newcomer Jeremy T. Thomas. “Big Bear got sick, and his insides turned black. Big Bear has become more angrier and meaner, because they had no food, no meat.” This is the chilling fairytale described by a young boy who holds a dark secret in Scott Cooper’s twisted horror, Antlers. Menacingly he adds, “But they had each other.”

Steeped in American folklore and European fairy tales, with a distinctly modern spin, Antlers is a haunting tale that blends together the First Nation myth of the Wendigo –a monstrous, shape-shifting creature with pronged horns and a taste for human flesh –with The Tale Of The Three Bears, and the results are terrifying.

The script is based on the short story The Quiet Boy, by Nick Acosta. Acosta’s tale of terror, adapted for the big screen by C. Henry Chaisson and Cooper, transports audiences to a seemingly pleasant small town in Oregon, where the Lucas is poor, even by the standards of families in the area, and his home is in a down-at-heel part of town. Meadows is concerned for the boy because he is bullied by his peers and shows up each day in the same clothes. Meadows’ concern only worsens when Lucas is asked to share a story in class, and he describes a twisted

“Helping Cooper bring his chilling vision to the big screen is maestro of all things monstrous and macabre,

Guillermo del Toro”

townsfolk live unaware of the evil that lurks on the other side of the tracks.

Award-winning Keri Russell (Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, The Americans) plays Julia Meadows, a teacher newly returned to the town to live with her brother, Paul, the local sheriff, played by Jesse Plemons. In her class is the meek and wellmannered Lucas Weaver. version of the three bears.

Helping Cooper bring his chilling vision to the big screen is maestro of all things monstrous and macabre, Guillermo del Toro (The Shape Of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth), in a producer role. As well as his own work as a director, Del Toro has a gift for helping many directors with a similarly twisted mindset to bring their visions to life. J.A. Bayona’s The Orphanage, and André Øvredal’s anthology horror, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, are proof that when he collaborates with a director, horror fans should get excited.

Although the Del Toro stamp of approval guarantees the quality of Cooper’s first fullblooded foray into horror, the Antlers director has always displayed a fascination for the murkier aspects of humanity. Hostiles, starring Christian Bale, was a brutal and violent portrayal of life on the American frontier, and the gritty thriller Out Of The Furnace also dealt with dark themes. His debut, Crazy Heart, which won Jeff Bridges an Academy Award, also dabbled in the dark side of addiction.

So this spring, get ready to delve into a dark tale that locks horns with an evil that lurks within, and where things won’t end happily ever after. Joseph Walsh

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