THE ANTICHRIST 1974
“The Antichrist” is an Italian religious horror film that came out after “The Exorcist”. The film was surely a cash grab of sorts, to capitalize on the success of the latter’s popularity, but “The Antichrist” falls short in many ways.
Though there are beautiful shots in the film, the movie’s greatest downfall is the plot itself. In the years since “The Exorcist”, there’s been a standard formula for ‘exorcism’ movies, but “The Antichrist” follows this too closely. In many ways, the movie is just “copying the homework”, without adding anything new at all.
I’ve yet to watch “The Exorcist” movie, but I’ve read the book, and that is enough for me to know how much this movie shamelessly takes from it. Some of the ideas between the two medias are changed, but not greatly. I didn’t want to compare the two, initially, but it’s hard when some of the ideas are such blatant rip offs.
A quick summarization of the plot is that the main character, Ippolita, believes that she can’t walk, in the decades since a car crash that killed her mother. Ippolita is very attached to her father, and detests the idea of him finding someone new to love. Ippolita has no reason to believe that she can’t walk, as doctors prove that there’s no actual health reason preventing this. A psychiatrist examines her, and this leads to some sort of past life recall, where it’s revealed that Ippolita is the reincarnation of an ancestor with the same exact name. This ancestor was in league with satan, having had intercourse with him presumably, at a witch’s sabbath. Ippolita becomes possessed, sexual, and able to walk again. She ends up at a sight seeing tour and has relations with a random guy, only to not remember it. She “wakes up” in a field, “normal”, and unable to walk again.
Eventually, Ippolita becomes more possessed and vulgar. She ends up being exorcised, and at the end of the film she runs out of her home, potentially about to jump off of a building, but it “saved” by her father forcing her to hug a giant cross. At the end of the movie she seems to be normal, and walks away with her father and another character.
The movie wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t something that I’d watch again. As stated before, there were beautiful shots, with the camera work. It’s strange, because there was this high quality to the film. You can easily see everything that’s going on, the audio was quite well (though a little desynced, but that might have been due to the website I watched it on), and even the settings were beautifully decorated. You see many beautiful shots of the Italian countryside, and Italian architecture, but the story itself negates all that.
The idea is that Ippolita is losing her faith, and doesn’t want to lose her father to another woman. The more the movie went on, I felt less inclined to care about Ippolita, because she didn’t appear to suffer from demonic possession, but some sort of mental illness. I know that we’re supposed to suspend our disbelief, but it’s hard for me to seriously believe that Ippolita had anything to do with Satan. This was established from nearly the beginning of the film, where Ippolita and her father went to a statue of the virgin mary, where the idea was to touch the statue, and it would “heal her”, and allow her to walk again. But Ippolita falls, not even reaching the statue. Somehow, this knocks down her faith, like as if God abandoned her. I didn’t understand how this would be enough for her to become possessed, when she could have gotten up and walked towards the statue with the help of her father.
The opening scene to the movie was interesting, because it seemed like it was trying to portray how this statue really did help those that touched it, but it also showed pure religious fanaticism. One woman was brought to the statue by her family, and she spit on it, calling the virgin mary a whore. But as soon as she touched the statue, she became calm. This woman was actually one of the ones that helped Ippolita up when she fell.
One of the people there, was a gross man with green slime coming down his face. He was obviously at the ends of life due to his possession, and he ends up jumping off a building, killing himself. This was said to cement his relation with Satan. The green screen effect of him jumping off was silly to me. While I applaud the make up for making him look gross, it was almost too well done. I had a hard time watching the green puke.
As the movie moved on, I found it strange how we’re just supposed to care for Ippolita. She doesn’t appear to want to better herself in anyway, and nearly everyone actually cares about her. It was strange, how she insisted that no-one really loved her, despite the fact that every character’s life revolved around her.
Near the end of the movie, Ippolita vomits green puke, very much like what you see in clips from “The Exorcist”. This was disgusting, and I had a hard time watching this part. She forced a guy to eat it, and I just wanted to barf.
The movie is nearly 2 hours long, but strangely, it didn’t feel like a drag the entire time. There were concepts I found interesting, but I question how much I found entertaining. Were those just all of the parts ripped off of “The Exorcist”? I honestly believe that this film took from both the book and film versions of it.
In some ways, I can see why they would want to create their own version. I felt like there was a lot of potential to create something scary, because of their location. Imagine what could have been, with their proximity to the actual Vatican! There’s a lot of wasted potential here.
I don’t find the movie terrible, but I don’t recommend it. You can watch it once, and never again. There are other films that explore the idea of an exorcism much better than this one.
2/5 | 1 slime
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