🦌 Antlers (2021) Review

“When folklore becomes family horror.”


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Lets start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

🎥 Trailers

Marketed as a chilling fusion of Native American folklore and small-town horror, the trailers for Antlers promised an atmospheric and disturbing take on the Wendigo myth.


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📖 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Set in a small, isolated Oregon town, the film follows a young boy named Lucas, who seems withdrawn and disturbed. He’s hiding a terrible secret: his father has fallen mysteriously ill, and Lucas is forced to care for him in secret. Meanwhile, Julia (Keri Russell), Lucas’ schoolteacher, begins to suspect something is wrong at home.

As the story unfolds, the town learns the sickness isn’t just human — it’s tied to an ancient Native American legend: the Wendigo. The result is a mix of folklore horror, family drama, and small-town dread.


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🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Character Rundown

Lucas Weaver (Jeremy T. Thomas): The heart of the film — a boy carrying impossible burdens while trying to protect his family.

Julia Meadows (Keri Russell): Lucas’ teacher, who recognizes signs of abuse and neglect, and brings her own past trauma into the story.

Paul Meadows (Jesse Plemons): Julia’s brother and the town sheriff, skeptical until the horror becomes unavoidable.

Frank Weaver (Scott Haze): Lucas’ father, whose mysterious illness begins the chain of events.

The Wendigo: A folkloric creature tied to greed, hunger, and survival — reimagined here with a divisive creature design.



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🕹️ Pacing / Episode Flow

The first half of Antlers is excellent: tense, creepy, and atmospheric. Lucas’ secret, the eerie sound design, and his father’s unsettling “illness” build genuine dread. Unfortunately, the film loses steam in the third act, when the Wendigo is revealed in full. Instead of keeping with the lean, starved look of the original myth, it goes for a bulky, antlered “kaiju-lite” monster that feels out of place with the film’s slow-burn creepiness.


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✅ Pros

Atmosphere: The foggy Oregon setting and decaying small-town vibe are oppressive and immersive.

Lucas’ storyline: Heartbreaking and haunting, a strong emotional anchor.

First-half horror: Creepy, slow, and unnerving.

Folklore foundation: Using the Wendigo myth grounds the story in something older and scarier than just a “monster.”



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❌ Cons

The Wendigo design: More “antler kaiju” than starved cannibal spirit, missing the point of the folklore.

The message: Trauma and generational abuse are important themes, but the film beats the audience over the head with them instead of weaving them subtly.

Town logic: The tiny town has maybe two cops, one of whom decides to “call the mayor” on a landline like there’s some hotline directly to his office. Ridiculous.

Final act: Shifts from quiet dread to CGI spectacle, killing the tension built earlier.



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💭 Final Thoughts

Antlers could have been a horror classic. Its first half nails atmosphere, tension, and folklore integration. But the ending undercuts the setup with poor choices — an overdesigned creature, clumsy town dynamics, and a heavy-handed message that refuses to let the audience interpret things for themselves. It’s still worth watching, but it’s more of a “what could have been” than a fully satisfying horror film.


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⭐ Rating

7/10 — Creepy and atmospheric, but undermined by an overcooked finale and heavy-handed messaging.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning ⚠️

🕵️ Spoilers

Lucas’ father, Frank, becomes the host of the Wendigo spirit after inhaling toxic fumes while cooking meth deep in the woods. As the illness progresses, Lucas hides him in the house, feeding him scraps, while also trying to care for his younger brother. Frank mutates grotesquely before fully transforming into a Wendigo.

The Wendigo legend is explained by a Native American elder, who ties it to greed, starvation, and destruction. In folklore, the Wendigo is not a giant antlered beast — it’s a skeletal, corpse-like figure, gaunt and starved, with sunken eyes and desiccated skin stretched over bones. It’s a human cursed by insatiable hunger, often linked to cannibalism and survival in harsh winters. The monster is horrifying precisely because it still looks human, a reflection of what desperation can turn people into.

The film, however, abandons this for a hulking antlered creature that looks like a rejected kaiju design. It completely misreads the myth, turning a terrifying metaphor for human greed into a mid-sized CGI monster fight.

The movie’s “message” is hammered home with no subtlety: trauma is passed down in families like a curse. Julia’s own childhood abuse mirrors Lucas’ suffering, and the Wendigo becomes a stand-in for generational trauma. Instead of letting the metaphor speak naturally, the script force-feeds it, hitting the audience with a sledgehammer instead of trust.

In the climax, Julia kills the Wendigo-possessed Frank to break the curse, only to discover Lucas’ younger brother is also infected. Julia is forced to kill him too, doubling down on the theme of trauma repeating itself. The film ends ambiguously, suggesting the cycle may not be over — but by then, the subtlety is long gone.