Let’s see if we’re in danger.
The best part of this movie is the first sixty seconds where we get a montage of old horror shorts with awesome visuals of hell and the devil. So, yes, the best part of this movie is what was used as open access and not part of the movie itself.
Antrum tells the tale of a supposedly haunted film that has a curse attached to it. So, we’re watching The Ring, I guess. We get this over-the-top bullshit documentary at the beginning.
You might be wondering why I am being so hard on this one when I have been nicer to other docu-horror. I’m not sure why, but this one takes itself so absurdly seriously that I hurt my eyes from rolling them so hard at this one. It reminds me of the old ads about how heavy metal music will turn people satanic or other such nonsense.
Also, it is problematic to have a film make the argument that media is dangerous when that stupid argument circles back up after some mass shootings. This is crap for people who watch nothing but Fox News and think Marilyn Manson is a danger to society.
Once the painful documentary section ends, we finally get to the film. (Of course, this is after the 30 second count down, which just drips pretension).
The film has a strong marketing plan. The whole danger aspect of the film will probably get a few more people to check it out. However, once we get into it, the whole thing is just another microbudget crap horror film that can’t come close to living up the hype. How this is getting good reviews (and not just the obligatory fake ones) is beyond me. Playing around with symbols and words in the film isn’t scary, at best it is distracting, for me it was annoying.
Let’s watch a couple kids dick around in the forest and play around with an evil book. Or is it a good book? I’m not sure. I was too damn bored here to try to figure out what they were trying to do. The film mixes so much symbolism that I’m sure thee was an attempt at a point made, but what that point is who knows.
Fans of weird 70s horror might like this. The film tries for a hypnotic and unsettling vibe that didn’t work on me (but it might on you). However, I just don’t see anything interesting enough to grab on to.
I found it to be pointless and boring. It needed to have more (or any) scares to be at all interesting. Avoid this one, not for any danger, but to prevent boredom. If the lack of plot or scares don’t exhaust you, the pretension will.
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