I never had high expectations from John Carter and that says something about the poor marketing surrounding the movie. Seems there was a strong force within Disney spreading that this film will not do well. They took this as far as announcing losses while the movie was and is at the moment on the theatres! What kind of a strategy is That to write a movie off and killing any chances of returning some of the investment by stabbing them on the back like this? If I was the director I would take this very personally! But what about the movie? Is it really as bad as they make it sound?

Well, yes and no! This is just another addition to a very long list of the movies that had good potentials but suffered from poor script and lacked enough sophistication to impress the audience both visually and intellectually! The film studios have the tendency to “dumb down” the movies so it will appeal to everyone! Or this is what they believe, however, if inception thought us anything, not only the general audience will and can keep up with more complex stories, they will truly enjoy it! So why do we still need to do this? Like in JC when he explains how was alive and not dead which brought the audience nothing but a sarcastic laughter! The concept and the core story is good, but the script, the dialogues and the overall story telling is so very poor and get you thinking whether this film had a director at all!?

The visuals overall are very impressive. A lot of nice VFX works by the London houses mainly double negative, nothing ground breaking or new but decent nonetheless. However, I noticed some disturbing issues with the fine details such a keying that was way off in cases possible due to the tight deadline perhaps! I hope! The colour grade of the Mars was very strange as well, too yellow for a red planet! Couldn’t they just grade the sand a little bit?! (Mars was taken of the title because Disney believed having this in the title will push away the audience not interested in Sci-Fi movies! Stupid! But even if that’s true should you lie to your audience and pretend otherwise?)

Andrew Stanton who comes from a very successful and creative background failed not to only to bring his favourite childhood comic book to life but to present himself as a director that had learned from this experience. He remained very arrogant and completely ignorant to the budget of the movie claiming he doesn’t care! As if that proves anything (Listen to Kermode’s review on BBC radio 5 and Director’s interview ) and cleared all the good memories I’ve had from Wall.E and Finding Nemo! I definitely won’t be on the line to watch his next movie and the same goes for next Disney’s release!

The movie wasn’t without its moments and good humour here and there and you leave the theatres with a disappointed smile on your face wishing they had done better with all these likeable characters and the charming story.

This film is categorized as ‘Drama,Horror’ genre, but honestly I don’t think there’s any genre to describe it! with  avery powerful beginning (black and white, slow motion) as a prologue, the story is divided into three chapters; Grief, Pain, Despair.

“A couple lose their young son when he falls out the window while they have sex in the other room. The mother’s grief consigns her to hospital, but her therapist husband brings her home intent on treating her depression himself. To confront her fears they go to stay at their remote cabin in the woods, “Eden”, where something untold happened the previous summer. Told in four chapters with a prologue and epilogue, the film details acts of lustful cruelty as the man and woman unfold the darker side of nature outside and within(imdb.com)”

Cinematography wise, the film features a diverse use of different and interesting techniques . Even the camera movements in handheld shots are different from what we used to see and have unexpected turns and pauses.  The storyline is a bit slow but seemed necessary to help the peace.  Many disturbing scenes such as women making a hole in the man body using a mechanical drill! which caused a lot of screaming from the audience. Apart from the prologue which is beautifully done there are other slow motion scenes nicely framed and designed looking more like a photograph or painting.

The director Lars von Trier became very famous after his theatrical look like film “Dogville (2003)” and this  film was his big come back after making films mostly screened on Denmark (his home) in the last few years.

Antichrist makes you scared, upset, bored, laugh, discussed and even more! and it’s not the kind of film that you have a certain feeling about it when you are leaving the cinema, give  it a few days, it becomes a good memory of a well made different type of cinema.