Antichrist is the latest visually stunning and potentially morally corrupting film from Lars von Trier. Willem Dafoe stars as the husband and cognitive therapist alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg from The Science of Sleep as the wife.

The film is separated into three main sections: Grief, Pain and Despair, represented by the animal incarnations of a deer giving stillbirth, a fox eating its own entrails and an undead crow. The prologue shows the couple having sex in the shower while their toddler son walks off the window ledge to his death on the snowy street. It’s shot in fanciful black and white, emphasizing the art of the lens. Von Trier uses super-slow-motion creating an operatic spectacle out of the one-dimensional plot set up. The explicit penetration is surprising, to say the least, but by the end of this film audiences will be introduced to ideas and imagery much more disturbing.

The greatest gift this film offers is the visual style. Von Trier introduces audiences to the beauty of water in motion and the heaving heartbeat of nature. The film is exquisitely composed and exists outside the realm of plot as photographic art.

While Dafoe grieves properly for their son at the funeral, his wife internalizes her feelings as guilt and suffers from a debilitating depression. Dafoe wants to use cognitive therapy to help her face her fears by visiting their summer cottage in Eden. The film takes a turn when they both begin to embrace their fears and all reason vacates their existence.

It is a very hard movie to watch. It borders on soul crushing. We enter as rational beings and exit shaken and devolved. It’s a horror film for intellectuals. We fear not the boogeyman, but ourselves.

Although the film alludes to greater intellectual and metaphysical questions, there are, thankfully, no answers given. However, even a discussion of these issues is absent as von Trier uses them disingenuously to attack the audience.  Antichrist succeeds as horror, beauty and art, not as philosophy.