Antrum: Movie Review and Discussion
Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018)
Genre: Horror
Director: David Amito & Michael Laicini
Writer: David Amito & Michael Laicini
Stars: Nicole Tompkins & Rowan Smyth
Moron Films Rating: Worth Buying
Review:
Antrum, the actual film at the heart of the larger work entitled “Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made,” is a showpiece that manages to shine forth with a certain undefinable creative beauty and charm in spite of the unfortunate documentary wrapper in which it has been housed, and is destined to become a cult classic film. Dare I be so bold as to recommend that Criterion get on this one early?
Ostensibly created in the 1970’s, Antrum is the story of a young girl who takes her younger brother into the forest in order to dig a hole to hell and rescue the family dog who he believes has been taken there after it has been put to rest for attacking him. The deeper they dig, the stranger things around them become.
Antrum is a film that astounds upon first viewing and continues to slowly grow on you as you go back over it in your mind over time. Although mixed reviews reveal that it is not for everyone, with some finding it boring due to a slower pacing than one found in most modern movies, whether it ultimately satisfies your own personal tastes or not, I believe Antrum to be one of those Things Everyone Should See At Least Once. #TESSALO
Antrum: Official Trailer
Discussion (with spoilers)
Did the idea for the film grow out of the concept of making a cursed film, or was the cursed film angle created later as marketing ploy for the film already created? Due to the obvious passion and care with which the actual film was made, and the seemingly less caring way in which the documentary portion was handled, it would certainly suggest the later.
Unlike The Blair Witch Project, in which the marketing concept that this was a real event was intimately intertwined with the story its self, and handled with equal care to the film, in Antrum, the concept of it being a cursed film appears to have been wedged into the movie as an afterthought through the act of adding occult symbolism and edits spliced into the recently discovered print of the film which is being used for this documentary. Yet the documentary its self appears to disprove that the alterations were responsible for the “cursed” effects of the film.
In the opening documentary, before the film is shown, it clearly states that “since this print has been in circulation, some unknown third parties have manipulated it, as there are multiple occurrences of what appears to be unrelated and graphic footage spliced into the print.” It was this print, the one that they found at the estate sale and are using here in this particular video, that was altered at some later point. This clearly shows that the alterations actually had nothing to do with the cursed nature of the film. As the print used in the first screening was clearly destroyed in the fire that burned down the theater in which the film was originally shown, it was clearly not this altered print that was used. Yet the curse was present.
If anything, this would suggest that the alterations actually made the cursed nature of the film less potent. If it was the altered print that was the one sent out to festivals, this would explain why the first screening (of the unaltered film) had an immediate effect at the time of viewing, whereas the later deaths only occurred later, after the viewing had already taken place.
The one exception to the altered timing in the deaths would be in the theater trampling which occurred at the final screening of the film in a San Francisco theater before the film was finally lost. There are two factors to consider here, however. The first is that this was not a festival screening. The altered print that was being sent out to festivals may not have been the same print that was sent to the theater. The theater may have received an unaltered, and therefore undiluted, print of the film. The second factor to consider is that even if this theater received the altered print, the trampling at the time of the viewing may have been a direct result of the LSD laced popcorn rather than an immediate effect of watching the film its self. This does not cancel the fact that it was the curse of the film which caused the employee to lace the Popcorn. In fact, it is common for theater employees to have a private screening of films when they arrive at the theater, and therefore completely within the realm of possibility that he had seen the film first and then been inspired as a result of the curse to lace the popcorn.
The altered timing of the deaths, however, are not addressed within the documentary and are therefore just fun things to speculate about. My own impression when watching the documentary, however, was not that the altered print was in fact the one being sent around to the festivals. The impression that I got, although this was not directly stated, was that the alterations were made to the print sometime after it had been lost and ended up in private hands. This, again, would make no sense if the argument intended was that the alterations were what resulted in the cursed nature of the film.
In the end documentary, which played out during the end credit sequence, they state that the symbols were laid over the original print on a thin layer of plastic. Ignoring how this was determined without having the original print, at first glance this appears to be in direct conflict with the opening documentary. On closer inspection, however, this is not the case. When the opening documentary discusses the film being altered later by a third party, it is specifically referring to the splices and not necessarily to the symbols as well. This means that the symbols could indeed have been present from the beginning and therefore responsible for the cursed nature of the film after all. What this does mean, however, is that it was not likely a third party at all, such as a cult, that was responsible for placing the curse on the film. It had to be the original creators as they would no doubt screen at least the first copy of the print created to ensure that it contained no defects before approval.
The question then becomes, if the splices were clearly not a part of the original cursed film, why bother putting them in at all? Personally, I appreciate them. I admire them as expressions of art, and am thoroughly impressed with the fact that although on paper they should have never worked, they did work in the final film. But let’s face it, the film would have been fine without them. And given that they had nothing to do with the curse its self, it seems an odd choice to have included them in the film from the documentary perspective. My only conclusion would be that they feared that people would not accept their artistic vision in doing so, and so included it as a justification for their choice within the documentary.
In any case, all of this is to say that in my opinion the documentary wrapper not only did not work, but has actually proved to be detrimental to the over-all film. As a marketing strategy it was fine, but it should not have been included as a part of the final product. The film is much more successful standing alone on its own merits. Let us hope this be a lesson that they apply to future endeavors.
A very special thanks goes out to Night Mind for this video, which originally brought Antrum to my attention. The work that you do is always appreciated.
