Film Review: ANTLERS (2021): Keri Russell Returns To The Screen With A So-So Creature Feature

Antlers Review

Antlers (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Scott Cooper and starring Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Graham Greene, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane, Amy Madigan, Sawyer Jones, Cody Davis, Lyla Marlow, Jesse Downs, Arlo Hajdu, Dorian Kingi, Ken Kramer, Dendrie Taylor, Andy Thompson, Jake T. Roberts and Glynis Davies.

Antlers is director Scott Cooper’s new creature feature starring Keri Russell who became an instant star when she appeared on television’s “Felicity” back in the late 1990’s. While it’s great to see her acting on the big screen again and this horror film has some truly frightening moments, there is simply too little screen time with the creature. The picture’s pacing is slow at times and the film makes the audience wait quite a while to get some good looks at this movie’s monster. The last moments of Antlers are somewhat worth the wait but the movie treads on familiar ground a lot of the time although the movie does, admittedly, have a few new tricks up its sleeve.

Russell is featured as a junior high school teacher named Julia Meadows who notices that one of her young male students, Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas) seems to be going through something very intense in his personal life. Julia’s brother, Paul (Jesse Plemons) is the sheriff in the small Oregon town the film is set in. Julia asks her students to talk about myths or fairy tales they have read one day and one of her students mentions Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Little does Julia know that a real life dire myth is about to be unleashed upon this small town.

Amy Madigan of Uncle Buck plays Principal Ellen Booth. Madigan makes a “monster” comeback with her role here as she ends up going to see what is happening with the troubled student’s family when she visits their home. But, unfortunately, this film has a gruesome fate for the well dressed principal who finds out exactly what kind of demons are living in the home. It seems the monster is actually a human being who lives off eating others but there’s more to the story as the movie progresses.

Meanwhile, Paul is looking further into what is going on in the town and, in one scene, argues with Julia over her feelings of protectiveness towards Lucas. But, the audience is waiting to catch a glimpse of the creature that comes out of the human being who ate Ellen and, eventually, escapes the Weaver home where it proceeds to kill a kid who bullies Lucas among others.

The film’s main focus is on Julia who feels the need to keep Lucas safe from harm and the movie builds to a very exciting climax. When Julia finally meets the creature face-to-face, we get a phenomenal sequence between Julia and the monster but then the movie just peters out after that. Director Cooper could be trying to set the stage for a series so I don’t want to be too hard on the film but I think the movie needed at least ten more minutes of monster scenes to be a true success.

Graham Greene of Dances With Wolves plays a supporting part as the wise elderly man in the town who gives some insight into the film’s story line with one of his short scenes of dialogue. This film has some OK acting but Plemons is not one who emerges too victorious here despite his usually being one of the best parts of the previous movies he has been featured in. Plemons seems to be phoning in this performance.

The title Antlers will make sense when you see the creature in the movie. I won’t say any more so you can see for yourself what the pretty effective monster looks like. Keri Russell is always interesting and she gives her performance here a lot of depth. Russell delivers the best performance in the cast. She adds another respectable character to her distinguished resume.

Antlers may not get the sequel it probably would have liked to get. That’s why it’s so important for a director to make the most of the first movie in a potential franchise. There’s evidence that they wanted to make this movie into a franchise by the ending of the picture which leaves the door wide open for a sequel. Due to the fact that the creature is only seen for a small portion of the film, I have to say that Antlers ranks as just a merely adequate horror movie and I expected a little more. But, Keri Russell fans can add a point to the rating if they want to see her back on the screen again.

Rating: 6/10

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