Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (Movie Review)

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: Said to be a cursed film from the late 1970s, Antrum centers on a young boy and girl who enter the forest to dig a hole to hell.

REVIEW: "Since the dawn of cinema, we've been making movies about Hell and the devil. They've been just films. They've been safe. ANTRUM is not safe." So begins ANTRUM: THE DEADLIEST FILM EVER MADE (WATCH IT HERE / OWN IT HERE), a movie submitted to seven film festivals in 1983, that killed the festival programmers who rejected it, including death by – checks notes – poisonous fish. Then in 1988, a small movie theater screening the film "spontaneously erupted into a monument of fire," killing 56 people. Finally, the film was screened in San Francisco in 1993 and resulted in mass panic injuring over 30 people and causing the death of a pregnant woman. Since then, ANTRUM has become one of the hidden cult classics of all time. Whispered about in video stores and teased in online forums. Only a handful of people have seen it – and all of them are dead. This film is cursed. If you watch it, you die. Last year, producers tracked down a print of the film at an estate sale in Connecticut. This. Is. That. Film.

All of the above is, of course, complete and utter bullsh*t. This gimmick would have been a brilliant way for an indie producer to distribute an actual forgotten film from the '70s. I mean, no matter how boring it was, it would have been scary just with this legend attached to it. Alas, the film we are ultimately presented is a '70s throwback that basically reads as PET SEMATARY meets TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (don't get too excited just yet) with a couple of kids digging a hole to Hell to resurrect their believed dog and instead, running afoul of some backwoods butchers. And this '70s throwback is sandwiched between two quick 10 minutes documentaries that relay the info contained in the opening paragraph of this review. 

The first thing that struck me about the film within the film is that it goes to great lengths to appear as if it was made in Hungary (?) in the late '70s (see pic below) … but it's in English. Sure these kinds of films were made back in the day, but I think it would have been quite a bit more convincing had the film been, you know, in Hungarian with subtitles. The bad guys (of course) speak a foreign language. Not sure what language it was as the credits are written in Cyrillic, which a quick Google dive informs me is now used for Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, and some other Slavic languages.

That said, one interesting aspect that the movie introduces is that this supposed found film print has been manipulated over time by unknown third parties. This side gimmick allows the filmmakers to splice it random shots here and there and should have been a gold mine. But instead, this winning idea is brutally underused to the maximum degree, never showing us anything truly unsettling, and just throwing a few scratchy pentagrams (170!) here and there with some quick glimpses of naked people (Adam and Eve, get it?) in black and white. And thus brings up my ultimate issue with this film.

The filmmakers seem afraid to show us anything truly shocking, unsettling, horrific, or scary. Let alone "dangerous." Or "evil." Why bother to make a movie like this and then be afraid to go all the way? Or half the way? Or SOME of the way? Why promise a dangerous movie and then just give us a literal hour of kids digging a hole in the ground and playing with stop motion squirrels? I have no idea. No killer, all filler. Sure the film sports some creepy images. But it's too little, too late. And while the movie's final act tries to go TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, aside from the awesome statue we've all seen in promotional materials, this is mostly a wash as well and results in little more than the kids getting chased by the Trailer Park Boys.  

And speaking of the third act, just when things start to get a bit interesting with the evil hillbillies preparing to cook the kids alive in the above-mentioned statue – it ends too quickly. Even though this sequence is far and away the best of the film, it doesn't go anywhere near the levels we have seen it even PG-13 horror movies. Hell, TOURIST TRAP is rated PG and it's scarier than anything you will find in the quick ten some-odd minute sequence. The movie could have more than redeemed itself here. But alas, again it seems as if the filmmakers were scared to make an actual horror movie. 

And while we're here…

SPOILERS: I kept waiting for a twist that the older sister was really out there in the woods to sacrifice her younger brother to the devil. But no. Boring. Instead, we find out that the sister was just trying to make her younger brother feel better about his beloved dog dying. This immediately begs the question: If she was trying to make him feel better, why not just TALK to him about it in your backyard and tell him about doggie heaven or some shite. Why trek all the way out into the middle of an actual suicide forest to have him dig a hole to hell. None of this makes a lick of sense. END SPOILERS

Overall, I appreciated the movie's gimmick but feel the filmmakers weren't fully committed to making their movie within the movie feel like it's TRULY from the 70s and had been lost for the past few decades. They basically put the actors in '70s garb, threw an Instagram filter on their digital camera, and called it a day. And this lack of authenticity ruined the illusion for me. That said, I guess the film should be given credit for finding a way to take a good hour's worth of footage of two kids digging a hole in the woods and turn it into a movie. Oh, and speaking of authenticity, why cast recognizable actors as your "real" documentary subjects? I swear that was Paul Calderon from FOUR ROOMS and PULP FICTION there at the end. 

In the end, the movie feels like a student film you have to sit through for class credit with the filmmaker (your classmate) staring at you, waiting for you to tell them how amazing it was. Yeah, buddy. It was cool. Good job. Very clever. All in all, ANTRUM isn't a BAD movie. Just a dreadfully boring one that reeks of missed potential. The best way to enjoy it is to find a super gullible friend and try to convince him this is all real and then scare him yourself afterward. But, really, be warned that the scares will be up to YOU alone as this film provides no actual frights itself. At least the score is badass.