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Horrifying ‘ANTLERS’ is the Bleakest American Horror Movie of the Century

The American horror movie has a tradition of not crossing certain boundaries. There’s a reason that the most disturbing horror movies in the world are often born outside the borders of the United States, imported from counties like Serbia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, France, and Italy. Places with brutal histories (a commonality across all countries, unfortunately) wherein their countrymen acknowledge and grapple with their homeland’s wrongdoings through the medium of film. Something the American filmmaker, and the studio systems backing them, are oftentimes less comfortable with. The American appetite is just not as well-versed in particular extremities, like accepting the horrors of its own bloody past and desperate present. Read More

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Out in Theaters: THE FOREST

The Aokigahara forest is a place of living nightmares. The Forest is its own kind of living nightmare. Long known to be unholy grounds for those at the end of their proverbial rope come to see themselves off, the mere existence of Japan’s inland Suicide Forest, a densely populated Sea of Trees at the northwestern base of Mount Fuji, is a haunting reminder of human desperation come home to roost. For decades, Japan’s denizens have chartered a grim pilgrimage to Aokigahara to commit suicide, leaving the forest littered with human remains. The annual amount of pseudo-seppuku that occurs here is so staggering that the park rangers have taken measures to curb the corpses piling up, including affixing the park with suicide prevention information and installing security cameras to monitor for suspected attemptees. Still yet, at least a hundred people will die here every year. Read More