The wendigo is a First Nations mythological creature with an incredibly disturbing edge to it. While not as popular in films and media as other mythological creatures, it’s a terrifying creature based around insatiable greed or hunger, particularly of human flesh. It’s a fable ripe for metaphoric interpretation and it makes sense that Guillermo del Toro would be interested in producing a movie that mixes this monster/fable with psychological examinations of horror and trauma. Films like The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth similarly used ghosts and fantastical creatures to examine concepts such as abandonment and war. So it makes perfect sense that he would attach his name to Antlers, a film that utilizes the myth of the wendigo to explore generational trauma, abuse and rural decay. While this very dour film isn’t a bad movie, it’s a frustrating watch because it’s so close to being something incredibly special and moving.

Antlers lays out its general premise with slick precision, opening on a coastal community in rural Oregon. The camera pans over a large body of water towards a beautifully bleak tableaux of a rural town on the edge of a forested mountain, clad in fog. The action picks up at a mine, the wooded landed pierced with industrial buildings that have fallen into disrepair. Rural decay foisted against the natural landscape. A brief cold open sets up the conflict, as Frank Weaver (Scott Haze) leaves one of his sons Aiden (Sawyer Jones) in his truck while he goes through the soon-to-be-reopened mine to pack up his secret meth operation. But something else is in the mine with him and his coworker. Needless to say it doesn’t end well for either; the coworker will be later discovered in two parts, severed at the spine. And Frank? Well, he gets infected. This opening ends with a shot of Aiden vanishing into the darkness of the mine, his body devoured by darkness as he calls for his daddy, striking an unsettling and ominous tone that continues throughout the film.

Three weeks later, the story centers on Frank’s other son, the twelve-year-old Lucas (Jeremy T. Thomas) who has withdrawn in class. He tries to shy away from attention, both from a trio of bullies who torment him and his too-attentive teacher Julia (Keri Russell). After school, he comes across a skunk on a rocky beach and grabs one of the stones with murderous intent. Cut to him carrying the dead raccoon through the forest to his dark, lonely house where his father and younger brother are locked in the attic. The specter of abuse and neglect hangs over the house like the smell of the rotting carcass in Aiden’s hand.

On the opposite side of town, another family is in disrepair. Julia’s recently returned to town to teach, after fleeing the small town twenty years earlier. It’s not a pleasant situation for her, even though she’s reunited with her brother, and town sheriff, Paul (Jesse Plemons). Paul lives in the house they grew up in and while it isn’t as dank and darkly lit as Lucas’ residence, it’s equally filled with horrific memories that invade the screen in vague sequences that promise past violence and general ickiness. The simmering conflict between Julia and Paul, heightened by feelings of abandonment because she escaped and left him alone with their abusive father, is contrasted with Lucas’s family, allowing the viewer to make the connection that abuse and familial trauma is the real monster in Antlers.

So far, so good.

Director Scott Cooper drenches this horrific family drama in muted colors that deepen the sense of decay gripping the small Oregonian town. Brief new reports explain that the town has fallen into hard times but that mining operations will soon open up again. It’s the only time “hope” appears in this grim world where parents are increasingly “homeschooling” their kids in order to use them as drug mules or to keep the smell of meth away from teachers. It sets a mean and depressing picture for the horrific drama that unfolds, but it unfortunately feels all too much like set dressing because the narrative doesn’t take these pieces to create something bigger than its individual parts.

Most of the film is an intense drama about abuse, with the specter of the wendigo as a potent metaphor for the evilness gripping Lucas’s family. He slavishly brings his father and brother dead animals and lives in the darkness, using only a miner’s hat for light as he huddles in the corner, listening to the growls and howls and pleading coming from the locked attic. At school, a fable he’s created and forced to recite in class discusses the evil sickness taking over the stand-ins for his brother and father. And the accompanying drawings paint an even darker image of his situation. But like a victim of abuse, Lucas covers up the monsters at home, ending his story with a, “but they have each other.”

At a particular point, though, the creature feature nature of Antlers rears its thorny head and all of the slow-building tension is released. It’s like two films smashed together and the script by Henry Chaisson, Nick Antosca and Scott Cooper doesn’t handle the transition very well. It’s rare to say this, but Antlers should have had some more time to connect these two parts together instead of turning on a dime to ditch most of the character work for murderous mayhem. As it stands, the trauma and character work it spent almost an hour building becomes mise-en-scène with little follow-through. This squanders the fantastic setup and keeps the film from being a classic in the same realm as The Babadook or its ilk. It’s a shame because the creature design is stunning, evoking a horned monstrosity that felt akin to the creature in The Ritual mixed with a beastly eldritch creature from Bloodborne. And when Antlers goes full horror, Scott Cooper stages incredibly effective scenes that rely on a mix of darkness, practical effects and computer generated special effects to create tension. One particular creature reveal towards the end is seared into my brain.

All of the pieces are there and work well on their own. They just don’t coalesce into something as traumatizing and upsetting as the film wants its denouement to be. Part creature feature and part familial drama, Antlers has a bunch of intriguing ideas but the script lacks the finesse to elevate the film from a decent watch to something truly remarkable.