Antlers

Director Scott Cooper's first foray into genre fare (after dramas such as Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace) draws on the wendigo myth of Native American legend. Keri Russell plays the new teacher in a depressed Oregon mining town whose personal demons help her recognise student Jeremy T Thomas as a traumatised soul. The creepy reality is that his drug-manufacturing father is transforming into the eternally starving, flesh-eating shape-shifter, and putting his younger brother at risk. Mixing the horror of An American Werewolf in London with a little Video Nasty cannibalism, Cooper summons enough shadowy dread to pass monster muster, but sadly sidelines all allegorical content in favour of simplistic creature feature theatrics.