Antichrist: An Analysis
This chapter offers a detailed analysis of Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009). In some respects, Antichrist is a deceptive title, implying a simple reversal of the Christian opposition between good and evil, yet the film should, in part, be understood in a context more complicated than that of Christianity, or even New Age pseudo-paganism. It occupies a unique territory, somewhere between horror film and psychodrama, where themes such as misogyny, maternal ambivalence, madness, and lust permeate a ruptured dreamscape with a sustained and unique oddness. Hence, the world of the film is, in a sense, gothic and fantastic; a mode particularly suited for expressing a heady mix of ‘unconscious desire, repressed energies and antisocial fantasies’. The gothic space is also a sight of seduction, sexual transgression, cruelty, humiliation, and death; themes that are all reworked and recombined in Antichrist's dramatic atmosphere. Ultimately, what makes Antichrist stick with audiences is the potent undertow, the sense of loss, guilt, and despair that pervades the locations and plasters itself across the mother's grieving face.