AntibirthToo much hard partying can really mess with your perception of reality. But what if the hallucinatory trip Lou (Natasha Lyonne) experiences isn't just an effect of the drugs or her ostensible and sudden pregnancy, but something worse? Antibirth is a psychedelic body horror movie, a kind of Rosemary's Baby through the hazy smoke from a bong and the blur of emotional roller coaster and sensory overload that can come with pregnancy. Lou's already bottomed-out life takes a further nose dive when she discovers she's pregnant after a wild night of debauchery, even though she doesn't remember having intercourse. And whatever's in her womb is growing at supernatural speed. From here, things get weirder by the minute, and her paranoia races to catch up.
|
|
Antibirth is set in a rundown, rusted out shell of a town somewhere in wintry Michigan, where everything and everybody seems to be a part of the residual vestiges of a former military city, and the only recourse to kill the boredom and soul-crushing sense of emptiness is to get drunk and high, and party with abandon. Lou is no different; from the start she is portrayed as a swollen stoner, with big and unkempt hair, too much eyeliner, staggering around in a fishnet outfit that bulges from years of not taking care of herself. Natasha Lyonne gives a daring, physical performance, befitting Lou's cynical defeatism. She trusts Sadie (Chloë Sevigny), her friend since childhood who looks only marginally better, who is involved with a local pimp and drug dealer named Gabriel (Mark Webber). From the blurry montage of the bacchanalia at an abandoned hovel during the opening of Antibirth, it is clear that Gabriel and his accomplice, Warren (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), have done something to Lou. She can't remember what it was they did due to her memory loss as a result of her excesses, and this is the initial mystery of Antibirth. Although Lou protests that she hasn't had sex in half of a year--due to a prior miscarriage, she's convinced that she cannot bear normal children--her appearance and increased appetite for even more junk food lead everyone to the conclusion that she must have, even if her friends refrain from drawing attention to it. Lou's life is circling the drain; she lives in a deceptively spacious trailer on the outskirts of town left to her by her father, a home which is in a constant state of mess and coated in filth. She works only when she is broke, cleaning nasty hotel rooms at the Moonlight Inn, where she and a coworker take cocaine breaks instead of coffee breaks. She has little to no respect for herself--a predominant motif in Antibirth--which becomes more evident when she teasingly offers to give oral sex to her friend Luke (Emmanuel Kabongo) if he picks up a pregnancy test for her.
With her life in such absolute disarray, it could also be possible that the plot of Antibirth is born from a place in Lou which is crying out for some kind of escape, something she and Sadie both comment on as being an impossibility and a wishful dream. Directed by Danny Perez, Antibirth calls into question Lou's reliability as a participant in the story through frequent, hazy dissolves, and early conversations and scenes that seem disconnected from the overall plot. Moments like those when Lou and Sadie are meandering through a convenience store, while Lou does whip-its, or their conversations about trying to give the "baby" super powers like "Animal Man". These conversations are infused with a kind of "white trash" vernacular, making Lou's lifestyle convincing if also depressing--it gives Antibirth a kind of "Kevin Smith meets David Cronenberg" feel. Lou's increasing delirium is compounded by a life of watching bizarre television, including almost random portrayals of public access television, like alien abductions, breast feeding, and cartoons from a static-riddled cathode ray tube television set older than her. There is the suggestion, like with Cronenberg's Videodrome, that part of what is influencing Lou comes from these signals from "space" or wherever, affecting her not only mentally but in a physiological way as well. The influence of Cronenberg's earlier body of work is felt throughout Antibirth, from a scene where Lou sees herself in her mirror tearing away small scraps of flesh and an odd tooth like in The Fly, or the traumatic climax and subsequent effect that it has on Lou has earmarks of Scanners. The setting being a former haunting ground for the military plays to a paranoid element that whatever is affecting Lou is a part of a military experiment, a suggestion reinforced by the periodic conversations Gabriel has where he is concerned that his sponsor for a new kind of drug--a person known as "Isaac"--has a military background. When a gypsy/hippie woman named Lorna (Meg Tilly) tracks down Lou to try to help her with her "pregnancy" and memory loss--as well as the hallucinations--she reveals that she was ex-military, and that the same thing that's happening to Lou happened to her. Lorna comes across as a "conspiracy theory", off-the-grid type of person; though she appears to be wholly benevolent to Lou, there is the sense that because Lorna is associated with whatever strange phenomenon is happening to Lou, she cannot be trusted, and nothing happening to her can be for her own good. This draws further comparisons with Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, as Antibirth toys with the idea that whatever is "infecting" Lou has supernatural, evil origins. Aside from the dream sequences that are parallel to those of Rosemary Woodhouse in Rosemary's Baby, it seems that even though Lou is surrounded by people who she should trust, her experiences suggest the opposite is true. For instance, although Sadie is a life-long friend and party buddy, she is close with Gabriel, who we know had something to do with what happened to Lou from the start. Is Sadie "in on it"? Is it the paranoia of marijuana and other drugs making this anxiety and distrust worse? Lou is frequently seen drinking beer with "666" on the label--the "Mark of the Beast"--and whatever forces have caused her body to swell with amazing speed and feed her unholy dreams does not suggest the kind of "immaculate conception" she teases about early in the film. Even the title--Antibirth--suggests the birthing of an "Antichrist"-like figure, not something divine at all.
Antibirth is a horror movie that depicts pregnancy and child birth in nearly as gross and unpleasant of a way as one could imagine. It is a film which highlights the ugly terror that comes from forming a creature from a rapid growth of cells in the uterus, only to be violently excised when the woman is nearly ready to burst. Antibirth plays up the visceral side of pregnancy, and even the psychological effects it has on those who experience it first hand--which must be common enough, otherwise the Earth would be a pretty lonely place. The vivid, oversaturated color palette of Antibirth is a metaphor for Lou's warped perception of the world, due to her drug abuse, her body coping with the pregnancy, or both. The film has a kind of indie comic book vibe to it, something underground and outside the mainstream. Although many scenes where Lou and Sadie converse about the pregnancy or when Lou goes to work have a kind of trashy plausibility to them, this makes the stranger moments that are always lurking in the shadows of Antibirth--those acid-laced trips and withdrawal-provoked dreams--all the more disorienting, representing Lou's disintegrating sanity. Ironically, Antibirth also happens to have a surprisingly convincing anti-drug message--Lou is practically a poster child for the dangers of drug abuse. Antibirth makes some bold moves by juxtaposing body horror and pregnancy, stripping away the veneer of beauty and grace from this brutal, yet necessary, part of life.
Recommended for: Fans of a novel body horror film which creates a twisted quilt of paranoia, drugs, pregnancy, all wrapped up into a gross but compelling psychedelic film. Antibirth is clearly inspired by its predecessors, but brings a new tone and style to the body horror subgenre.
With her life in such absolute disarray, it could also be possible that the plot of Antibirth is born from a place in Lou which is crying out for some kind of escape, something she and Sadie both comment on as being an impossibility and a wishful dream. Directed by Danny Perez, Antibirth calls into question Lou's reliability as a participant in the story through frequent, hazy dissolves, and early conversations and scenes that seem disconnected from the overall plot. Moments like those when Lou and Sadie are meandering through a convenience store, while Lou does whip-its, or their conversations about trying to give the "baby" super powers like "Animal Man". These conversations are infused with a kind of "white trash" vernacular, making Lou's lifestyle convincing if also depressing--it gives Antibirth a kind of "Kevin Smith meets David Cronenberg" feel. Lou's increasing delirium is compounded by a life of watching bizarre television, including almost random portrayals of public access television, like alien abductions, breast feeding, and cartoons from a static-riddled cathode ray tube television set older than her. There is the suggestion, like with Cronenberg's Videodrome, that part of what is influencing Lou comes from these signals from "space" or wherever, affecting her not only mentally but in a physiological way as well. The influence of Cronenberg's earlier body of work is felt throughout Antibirth, from a scene where Lou sees herself in her mirror tearing away small scraps of flesh and an odd tooth like in The Fly, or the traumatic climax and subsequent effect that it has on Lou has earmarks of Scanners. The setting being a former haunting ground for the military plays to a paranoid element that whatever is affecting Lou is a part of a military experiment, a suggestion reinforced by the periodic conversations Gabriel has where he is concerned that his sponsor for a new kind of drug--a person known as "Isaac"--has a military background. When a gypsy/hippie woman named Lorna (Meg Tilly) tracks down Lou to try to help her with her "pregnancy" and memory loss--as well as the hallucinations--she reveals that she was ex-military, and that the same thing that's happening to Lou happened to her. Lorna comes across as a "conspiracy theory", off-the-grid type of person; though she appears to be wholly benevolent to Lou, there is the sense that because Lorna is associated with whatever strange phenomenon is happening to Lou, she cannot be trusted, and nothing happening to her can be for her own good. This draws further comparisons with Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, as Antibirth toys with the idea that whatever is "infecting" Lou has supernatural, evil origins. Aside from the dream sequences that are parallel to those of Rosemary Woodhouse in Rosemary's Baby, it seems that even though Lou is surrounded by people who she should trust, her experiences suggest the opposite is true. For instance, although Sadie is a life-long friend and party buddy, she is close with Gabriel, who we know had something to do with what happened to Lou from the start. Is Sadie "in on it"? Is it the paranoia of marijuana and other drugs making this anxiety and distrust worse? Lou is frequently seen drinking beer with "666" on the label--the "Mark of the Beast"--and whatever forces have caused her body to swell with amazing speed and feed her unholy dreams does not suggest the kind of "immaculate conception" she teases about early in the film. Even the title--Antibirth--suggests the birthing of an "Antichrist"-like figure, not something divine at all.
Antibirth is a horror movie that depicts pregnancy and child birth in nearly as gross and unpleasant of a way as one could imagine. It is a film which highlights the ugly terror that comes from forming a creature from a rapid growth of cells in the uterus, only to be violently excised when the woman is nearly ready to burst. Antibirth plays up the visceral side of pregnancy, and even the psychological effects it has on those who experience it first hand--which must be common enough, otherwise the Earth would be a pretty lonely place. The vivid, oversaturated color palette of Antibirth is a metaphor for Lou's warped perception of the world, due to her drug abuse, her body coping with the pregnancy, or both. The film has a kind of indie comic book vibe to it, something underground and outside the mainstream. Although many scenes where Lou and Sadie converse about the pregnancy or when Lou goes to work have a kind of trashy plausibility to them, this makes the stranger moments that are always lurking in the shadows of Antibirth--those acid-laced trips and withdrawal-provoked dreams--all the more disorienting, representing Lou's disintegrating sanity. Ironically, Antibirth also happens to have a surprisingly convincing anti-drug message--Lou is practically a poster child for the dangers of drug abuse. Antibirth makes some bold moves by juxtaposing body horror and pregnancy, stripping away the veneer of beauty and grace from this brutal, yet necessary, part of life.
Recommended for: Fans of a novel body horror film which creates a twisted quilt of paranoia, drugs, pregnancy, all wrapped up into a gross but compelling psychedelic film. Antibirth is clearly inspired by its predecessors, but brings a new tone and style to the body horror subgenre.