Antrum – The word means a natural cavity within a bone or other anatomical structure. The title is apt in the sense that the film Directed by Canadian directors David Amito and Michael Laicini Antrum settles into mind like sensory virus. It’s slow and plodding, yet is never relents in its painstakingly slow descent into supernatural evil. Rather than leaping off of the screen, Antrum seeps into your living room and slowly overtakes awareness.
The Deadliest Film Ever Made
Antrum comes wrapped in a layer of pseudo-documentary myth, presenting itself as a rumored film so stepped in evil intent that its curses it viewer with madness and death. In that, the film makes its greatest misstep. This framing collapses under its own weight and quickly begins to feel contrived. The gimmick fails to create its intended dread, but fortunately for Antrum, it has enough going for it to overcome. If nothing else, it primes the viewer not for a narrative, but rather an experience. Antrum is not so much a story as it is a revelation.
The setup is deceptively simple. A young boy, Nathan, and his older sister, Oralee, venture into the woods to dig a hole to Hell, hoping to rescue their recently deceased dog, Maxine, from eternal damnation. Where does a child get the idea that a puppy is condemned to hell? It’s something only a neurotic mother could do.
The premise plays like a rural legend or even a lost Creepypasta by providing a launching pad into the meat of the film, while also hanging a lingering existential dread over it. As implausible as the premise is, somehow one can see themselves engaging in this charade to help a child get over his grief.
As their hole gets deeper and deeper, the forest itself becomes the film’s true antagonist. Slowly logic dissolves and reality seems to contort and twist all around them. Every shot of the woods forces the viewer to peer deep for what might or might not be there. Trees loom like both a silent witnesses as well as willing participant to the horror. The air feels thick and oppressive. Once the evil is released, there is no safety, no guidance and no help. Only descent.
Descent into Psychological Horror
What makes Antrum so insidious is its commitment to slow, psychological decay. The film doesn’t rely on jump scares or monsters. Instead, it burrows into the subconscious through repetition, distortion, and suggestion. Occult symbols flicker subliminally. Audio frequencies hum beneath the surface, barely perceptible but deeply unsettling. Faces appear where they shouldn’t. Figures linger at the edge of the frame, refusing to resolve. Amito and Laicini cleverly disorient the senses, reinforcing the inevitability Oralee’s and Nathan’s predicament.
An Analog Horror Ritual
The 1970s aesthetic is not just a stylistic choice, it’s the chosen implement of horror. Grainy textures, washed-out colors, and analog imperfections create a sense of temporal dislocation, as if this footage was never meant to be found. In that, it draws clear parallels with Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010). The entire retro experience feels very authentic. The film feels corrupted. It is not only decaying; the video holds the ghostly image of something else reverberating below the surface.
A Limited but Adequate Cast
Oralee, played with eerie conviction by Nicole Tompkins, becomes both guide and unreliable narrator. She speaks with an uncertain authority, recounting occult knowledge was someone who doesn’t fully understand what she’s invoking. There’s something deeply unsettling about her initial unwillingness to abort the mission.
Nathan, played by Rowan Smyth, in contrast, embodies the vulnerability and innocence of a boy who lost his dog. His fear is palpable, grounding the film in a fragile reality that makes the surrounding surrealism all the more effective.
Together the pair feel so doomed by their good intentions. Oralee tries to save her brother from his own grief as Nathan tries to save his pupper from the fires of hell. What could be more wholesome… and naive. Each shovel of dirt takes them one step farther from reality and two steps closer to doom.
Occult Imagery and Symbolism
The film’s use of sigils and occult imagery shifts the tone from garden-variety insanity to Blair Witch style demonic evil. These are not the polished symbols seen in Wicca shops. They feel crude, primitive, as if scratched into the grainy fabric of the film itself. They appear without explanation, without context. They create an atmosphere of subliminal indoctrination that fosters a palpable unease.
Reoccurring images of Baphomet haunt Nathan through daydream sequences and carefully plotted frames. In short, if the subliminal imagery does not tip the viewer off to the nature of the danger, these images are a bit more “on the nose”. Eventually the images of Baphomet manifest into the real world in an encounter that dips into “Bring Out The Gimp” depravity.
Sound Design and Atmosphere
Antrum’s score is more of a pulse than a soundtrack. It pervades nearly every frame, sometimes lurking behind the gentle hiss of the air. Periodically it swells to the foreground before gently fading away. Ethereal atmospherics and distorted whispers give way to menacing drones and retreat again. As the action builds, these measured transitions explode into horn like blasts.The soundscape becomes an inextricable facet of the woods around them.
The audio’s omnipresence becomes most apparent in its absence; overtaken by the jarring scrapes of shovels digging a pathway to hell.
Common Threads – Films Like Antrum
Documenting the descent into hell as a path through insanity provides often-used trope for implementing horror. There are many examples like Carnival of Souls (1962), Jacob’s Ladder (1990) and As Above, So Below (2014) that cover similar territory yet feel very literal in their interpretations. Classics like The Blair With Project (1999) leverage similar techniques to elevate the woods into an oppressive monster in its own right.
Antrum takes a more subversive path. It shares more in common with avant-garde fare like Calvin Reeder’s The Oregonian (2010) and Jean Rollin’s masterpiece The Iron Rose (1973). Antrum shares the The Oregonian’s penchant for uncertainty and unexpected human encounters and The Iron Rose’s projection enchanting beauty through impenetrable darkness. Both of these films may be of interest to those that enjoy Antrum, but The Iron Rose is a deep-cut horror magnificence.
An Experiment in Fear that May Not Work For Everyone
In the end, what makes Antrum so effective is not what it shows, but what it suggests. It’s a film built on on absence and the spaces between frames. It requires the viewer to engage with it actively; to question, to doubt and to fear what they are seeing. Antrum’s ultimate goal is for the viewer to carry it with them after the credits roll.
This kind of horror doesn’t work for everyone, but for those it does work for, Antrum provides an uneasy journey into the dark anxiety ridden pits of otherworldly unknown.
Antrum (2018) Review - The Deadliest Film Ever Made Still Feels Dangerous - Malevolentdark
Director: David Amito and Michael Laicini
Date Created: 1970-01-01 00:33
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