Antlers

Teacher Julia (Keri Russell) is concerned for the welfare of one of her students Lucas (Jeremy T Thomas) who is painfully thin and showing textbook signs of abuse. She tries to get her brother Paul, the local sheriff (Jesse Plemons) to intervene but the family are known local drug cookers who've been in trouble endlessly and he's frustratingly defeatist, writing them off as a lost cause.

Frustrated, Julia starts to investigate by herself. No good will come of this.

CW: themes of child abuse

This uses a backdrop of rural poverty, abuse and hopelessness to set the scene for a conceptually pretty unremarkable and slow monster movie but it's beautifully atmospheric.

Reviews were poor but I think it was unfairly treated. The only egregious part is having used an indigenous American myth as its base they feel compelled to insert an indigenous character purely to deliver that myth in a slice of exposition and they're otherwise mostly absent.

The main cast do well, especially Jeremy Thomas as young Lucas and the odd bits of visceral gore on screen nicely done. Once things go off the deep end it escalates to its conclusion quickly.

There are callbacks to offscreen historical abuse that could be argued are unnecessary but I think they do well to explain character motivation when we so often have to assume our protagonist will do things simply because they're the protagonist.

Worth a look, 6/10, slow but delivers an effective slice of bleakness to go with your monster.