Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Antibirth' (2016)

Well that was fucking different... I was half considering making one of my nonsense "pretentious art snob" parody reviews about this but I think I want to actually talk about this movie. Which is funny, because unlike normal, I'm kinda at a loss for words.

Let me start by saying, I will recommend this movie, I'm even thinking of adding it to my "must watch" list, and you may wanna consider skipping the spoilers section of my review until you've seen this yourself.

This movie was a fucking train wreck, but it was done so intentionally, and done so right. You just find yourself getting fascinated by how fucking disastrous the female lead's life is. This woman goes on epic drug benders that make mine look like pussy shit. You actually sort of end up liking her because of it. It's like watching a shooting star. It's magnificent to watch it burn up, then eventually explode. As fucked up as this woman's life is, you never feel sorry for her like other horror movie victims. It's all just so damn fascinating.

There were a few moments that were almost too ridiculous. Without going into spoilers, some effects are better off being done with silly old fashioned means, like fog machines and color filters. Bad CGI, even if intentional, sometimes just seems out of place.

And another thing, this movie came dangerously close to having "gladiator moments." There was some stuff that just felt a little like needless artsy padding. And believe me, that would have no fucking place in this movie. It all tied in nicely, so I let it go for the most part. But this movie got gritty, and did gritty pretty fucking well. Everything gave you the feeling of wandering through a junkie pad and watching out for dirty heroin needles.

SPOILERS!!!

This is an alien abduction movie? Okay, that's almost disappointing. I was really hoping on some fucked up son of Satan shit. But okay, giving birth to an inter-dimensional lizard head has sort of a Lovecraftian vibe. However, when the body clawed its way out of the female lead's womb, that was some pretty epic shit!

My chief complaint about this movie is that it spends way too much time in the midst of an exposition about how fucked up the female lead's life is. It just never wants to move the fuck on. The movie needed to spend more time on her trying to figure out what happened to her the night she got pregnant. This is why a lot of the movie came off like "gladiator moments." They layered on gobs of the lead character experiencing the high of being pregnant with an inter-dimensional lizard head, without learning anything tangible about the drug that caused the female lead to get pregnant with a lizard head, or learning about the Lizard head itself, or maybe the weird ass cult that's trying to bring lizard being into our world by using druggies as vestles. Apparently the womb of the female lead was the only one toxic enough to gestate a lizard being. There's a fuck ton of detail I feel they ignored in favor of brightly colored psychedelic flashbacks.

And why the fuck does the movie have the drug dealer completely clueless about where the drug comes from, and then all the sudden become some sort of paramilitary mercenary working for him?! It would make sense if the drug dealer was clearly hiding it the whole time, but then there are moments when he clearly has no fucking clue what the fuck is going on. So which is it?

Anyway. This movie is like if Cronenberg tried to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's just so fucking twisted that there's nothing quite like it. I have to recommend it despite all of its faults. If you haven't watched this yet, you should.