Antichrist
IFC Films | Release Date: October 23, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
49
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
10
Negative:
11
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Possibly the best argument against couples therapy ever, Antichrist is a tour-de-force trip inside the mind of a dangerously depressed man. That man is Danish filmmaker von Trier, and he has gone on record as having conceived and executed Antichrist in the wake of a deep depression. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
More than anything else, I responded to the performances. Feature films may be fiction, but they are certainly documentaries showing actors in front of a camera. Both Dafoe and Gainsbourg have been risk takers, as anyone working with von Trier must be. The ways they're called upon to act in this film are extraordinary. They respond without hesitation. More important, they convince. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Like a nightmare you recall during waking hours, and then only in its vast outlines, Antichrist has the power to haunt beyond words. For better and for worse, it is exactly the movie von Trier wanted to make and a piece of staggeringly pure cinema. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
I’m inclined to agree with a colleague who told me he could swing with Antichrist when it was simply unstable but couldn’t go with it when it turned insane. Read full review
88
New York PostV.A. Musetto
Very few actors would have the courage to allow von Trier to put them through what Dafoe and Gainsbourg experienced in the name of art. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Antichrist is a boldly personal film, tossing all von Trier’s ideas about faith, fear, and human nature into an unfettered phantasmagoria, full of repulsive visions and fierce scorn. It’s also the most lush-looking movie von Trier has made in about 20 years. Read full review
80
EmpireKim Newman
A star rating is not much help, since von Trier’s self-conscious arrogance is calculated to split audiences into extremist factions, but Antichrist delivers enough beauty, terror and wonder to qualify as the strangest and most original horror movie of the year. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Taken as a whole, Antichrist is a gorgeous, mesmerizing construction, and almost every one of its frames shimmers with demented, imaginary life... It offers more proof, if we need any, that von Trier is one of the most accomplished cinema artists of our time, and also perhaps the most deeply trapped in his own head. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
I can’t deny this is filled with powerfully primal images, but at least one of them--an eviscerated fox that bellows at Dafoe, “Chaos reigns!”­--made me burst out laughing. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
By turns repellent, powerful and ludicrous, Antichrist piles horror on horror with pitiless passion. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
There’s a lot of hate in this film. But a lot of talent, too. It borders on despicable, but you can’t ignore it. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Bottom line: Do I recommend Antichrist? Tough to do, but tough not to. For those who are intrigued by the controversy, it may be worth the sacrifice, if only so you can evaluate it from a position of knowledge. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin Wilson
Tests the loyalty of fans that may expect his work to be extreme, but not to such an extent. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterPeter Brunette
Visually gorgeous to a fault and teeming with grandiose if often fascinating ideas that overwhelm the modest story that serves as their vehicle, this may be the least artistically successful film von Trier has ever made. Read full review
60
NPRMark Jenkins
For a hymn to panic and hostility, the movie is curiously artful. But only the most sympathetic viewers will find that its poetry outweighs its belligerence. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Depending on your reaction to the cinematic outrages perpetrated by Danish director Lars von Trier (remember Dogville?), you might want to add or subtract two stars from the halfway (half-assed?) rating I just gave Antichrist. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
It would be a shock if Antichrist had turned out to be anything but shocking. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The trouble is, it's all too exhibitionistic to ring true. The impotent folly of Antichrist is that von Trier has made it his mission to shock the bourgeoisie in an era when they can no longer be shocked. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
For 70 minutes, Antichrist is a rare exploration of pain, featuring two actors collaborating with each other in agonizing and intimate ways. It also contains some of the best work Gainsbourg has ever done on screen. And then - if I put it more gently I wouldn't really be saying it - director Lars von Trier loses his mind. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Antichrist finally embodies the contradiction of von Trier: He's a gifted, even visionary, artist mired in his own pulp pretentiousness. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
The trouble is that Antichrist feels progressively symptomatic of a director losing heart. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Antichrist, which, above all, wants to make pain visceral, is less successful at projecting authentic experience--the shock tactics are ultimately numbing. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz
Trouble is, it all adds up to . . . not much. Read full review
33
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Allegorical in the worst ways, Antichrist is about as profound as a slasher movie. Read full review
30
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with Antichrist. As if deliberately courting critical abuse, the Danish bad boy densely packs this theological-psychological horror opus with grotesque, self-consciously provocative images. Read full review
30
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
The scandal of Antichrist is not that it is grisly or upsetting but that it is so ponderous, so conceptually thin and so dull. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Von Trier has said he wanted to make a genre horror picture, but he couldn’t even come up with a decent metaphor: The climax is out of a Grade C hack-’em-up with people chasing each other through the woods with axes and knives. Read full review
25
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Antichrist is probably the most disturbing, bleak and self-indulgent film ever made. Read full review
25
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
I'm ripping up my Lars Von Trier fan club card. Read full review
20
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
The new movie is a joke, a toxic cocktail of banal psychobabble, laughably arty slo-mo flourishes and unmotivated sexual violence that only brain-in-jar types could take as a serious statement. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Von Trier ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville") has no barriers, which absolutely can be a good thing. Here, though, his uninhibited nature is an omen of the pretentious butchery to come. Read full review
20
Los Angeles TimesBetsy Sharkey
Female sexuality has evolved into pure evil here with Von Trier looking ever so much like the Marquis de Sade of filmmaking. Read full review
10
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
If only von Trier could work beyond the poster art concept. Antichrist stubbornly fails as a gothic nightmare and meanders as a misanthropic two-character drama. Read full review
10
SlateDana Stevens
The last 20 minutes are horrifically violent, relentlessly claustrophobic, and irredeemably pointless. Von Trier has us on the hot seat, and he's going to walk us through his most primitive sexual nightmares--not because they'll bring us to a greater understanding of madness or love or grief, but just because he bloody well feels like it. Read full review
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