10 Most Mind-Bendingly Confusing Horror Movies

The Film

A typically controversial offering from Denmark’s enfant terrible of film Lars von Trier, Antichrist opens with the tragic death of a toddler while his parents – credited simply as ‘He’ and ‘She’ and played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg – have sex.

At the therapist husband’s insistence, he and his almost catatonically grief-stricken wife retreat to their remote cabin in the woods, named Eden, to recuperate. Obviously, that turns out to be a bad idea when He’s plagued by weird visions including a talking fox that disembowels itself and She copes by demanding increasingly violent and sadomasochistic sex.

Throw in a scrotum-crushing scene, a bloody hand-job and a close-up DIY clitoridectomy and you have von Trier’s first foray into psychological horror.

What The Hell It Means

Some have hailed it a feminist horror and others as misogynistic while some see it as a religious allegory which makes sense given the satanic title and Eden setting.

But truth be told, von Trier was in the bouts of a deep depression while writing and filming Antichrist (in fact, it’s the first instalment in his so-called Depression Trilogy followed by Melancholia and Nymphomaniac), which speaks for how utterly dark and brooding the movie is.

It doesn’t quite explain the need for all the genital mutilation as much though.