When I see a film entitled “Antichrist,” my mind goes to horror.  I expect a storyline something along the line of Revelations, starring a malicious and supernatural being sent to earth to bring about the end of days.  But this being a Lars von Trier film, I knew it would be a very different animal.  This Antichrist does indeed evoke horror, but not the kind found in films of the horror genre.  Rather, Antichrist invokes the same sort of horror Kurtz might have felt while chugging down the river of his savagery in Heart of Darkness.

von Trier is to film what Arthur Schopenhauer was to philosophy.  His outlook on the world is a bleak one, yet one formed in intelligent arguments that raise the hairs of even the most hopeful thinkers.  In his world view, we need no demonic antichrist to punish us; we have other humans to do that f.  People, perhaps without intending to be so, serve the role of antichrist by self-flagellation, narcissism and egocentricity.  Antichrist documents this bleak state of being by means of a simple story between two nameless characters - “He” and “She.”