Looking at his entire filmography up to that point, Scott Cooper hardly jumped out as the ideal candidate to helm an R-rated supernatural horror movie that boasted master of the fantastical Guillermo del Toro as one of the producers.
The filmmaker had steered Jeff Bridges to an Academy Award win for Best Actor in country music drama Crazy Heart, collaborated with Christian Bale twice on crime thriller Out of the Furnace and revisionist Western Hostiles, while he also oversaw Johnny Depp’s finest performance in years after the star buried himself in prosthetics to play Whitey Bulger in Black Mass.
And yet, here he was helming Antlers, the tale of a small-town teacher and her sheriff brother discovering that a young student holds a dangerous secret that has dark, deadly and utterly terrifying consequences for everyone that comes within their orbit.
Antlers only hit theaters at the end of October, where it managed to bring in $18 million at the box office, while a 60% score on Rotten Tomatoes just about secured a Fresh rating. There’s plenty of interesting world-building and mythology on display, but it’s missing a certain intangible spark that would have taken things to the next level.
However, the Searchlight Pictures effort is proving to be popular on the Disney Plus charts as per FlixPatrol, with Antlers having cracked the global most-watched list despite only being available in a handful of international territories.