Antichrist (2009) on Netflix
Their infant son Nic falls from their apartment window to his death. A therapist takes his grieving wife to Eden, their cabin in the woods, to treat her depression himself.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb6.5/10146,212 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes53%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Seattle a couple are having sex in one room while their infant son, Nic, climbs up to a bedroom window in another and falls out of it. The mother breaks down at his funeral and spends the following month in the hospital. Her husband, a therapist, questions the care she is getting there and decides to treat her himself with psychotherapy. Nature is her second greatest fear, she tells him, so he picks exposure therapy and walks with her to the isolated cabin in the woods that they call Eden, where she had stayed with Nic the summer before while she worked on a thesis that criticized gynocide. On the hike the man comes upon a deer that does not fear him, a stillborn fawn hanging from her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Antichrist (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was banned in France in 2016 after the Catholic traditionalist group Promouvoir took it to court and the original decision to pass it was withdrawn; the ban held until July 2023, when it was passed at the highest classification available in the country, 18, one of only 21 titles to receive it since 1975.
SPOILER
The film was originally scheduled for production in 2005, but executive producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen accidentally revealed its planned revelation, that earth was created by Satan and not by God; Trier was furious and delayed the shoot so he could rewrite the script.- Eva Green was initially approached for the female lead, the role of "She", and according to Trier she was determined to appear in the film, but her agents refused to allow her; the unsuccessful casting attempt took two months of the pre-production process.
- Plaster casts were made of Willem Dafoe's leg and of the female double's vulva, and the vulva prop was constructed with its inner parts detachable so it could be prepared quickly if several takes were needed.
- During an early casting attempt, English actors who had come to Copenhagen had to be sent home while Trier cried, because his poor condition did not allow him to meet them.
- Czech animal trainer Ota Bares, who had worked with part of the crew on the 2005 film Adam's Apples, was hired early on and given instructions about what the animals had to do; the fox was taught to open its mouth on a given command to simulate speaking movements.
- Trier began writing Antichrist in 2006 while he was hospitalized for depression, conceiving it as a horror film because the form allowed "a lot of very, very strange images", and drawing on contemporary Japanese horror films such as Ring and Dark Water that he had recently seen.
