10 Horror Movie Romances That Make Love Terrifying
3. Antichrist (2009)
Lars von Trier’s exploration of a married couple’s grief after the death of their son garnered a lot of controversy for its extreme violence, particularly for its depictions of battered and mutilated genitals.
There’s a lot you can try to infer from Antichrist’s onslaught of gruesome and allegorical imagery. For the purposes of this list, we shall read it as - Lars von Trier Presents: Marriage, a Cautionary Tale!
The unnamed wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is suffering from severe depression after the death of the couple’s child, so she and her husband (Willem Dafoe) retreat into the woods. Whilst there she is also writing a thesis on gynocide and witch hunts, which leads to her believing that all women are evil.
Soon, she goes utterly insane, and subjects her husband to horrific sexual violence, and from then on it becomes a bloody fight for survival in the woods between husband and wife.
It is also revealed that she deliberately allowed the death of their son to occur, so it actually turns out she was evil long. Poor Willem Dafoe sure picked a wrong’un.
It’s no surprise that Antichrist got labelled misogynistic by some critics, because if this is how von Trier sees women and marriage then no wonder he’s been divorced twice.