10 Horror Movies Nobody Understands

Like Nic Roeg’s seminal giallo-influenced Don’t Look Now, Lars Von Trier’s harrowing, compulsive descent into madness begins with a couple dealing with the devastating grief of suddenly losing a child. Unlike Roeg’s dreamlike chiller, Antichrist deals in transgression and the metre of suffering: the extreme mutilations that result are echoes of the dislocation Charlotte Gainsbourg’s She feels throughout.

Willem Dafoe’s He has taken his wife to a remote cabin to attempt to restore her after the tragedy, but his psychological training proves condescending. He’s all rationality, even as her innate pain shifts from self-harm to abject violence. Antichrist is not for the faint at heart, but it’s not a shallow slice of torture porn either.

Churning hopelessly, the product of a nervous breakdown (Von Trier was still suffering the effects of depression during the shoot), the film invites multiple interpretations, some of which are counterintuitive - is it about witchcraft, or the idea of witchcraft? It’s been called a misogynist movie and a feminist movie, a film about sexual hysteria and about feminine power.

Certainly there’s a definite fear of women throughout Antichrist, but that’s not the same as true misogyny - here, that horrified fascination comes twinned with a healthy respect. The ending sees Dafoe’s character, hobbled and hobbling his way back to civilisation, encounter a hillside swarming with innumerable faceless women.

Are they the spectres of witches long gone, or revenants of women falsely accused? He has no idea, and neither do we. All we know is that chaos reigns.