The setting is a small Oregon coal mining town that looks funereal even before the wendigo stacks up spines like discarded toothpicks.
The wendigo stalks the movie like just another rattle-throat corpse-grinder that yowls and stomps and does its darnedest to trample a path for a sequel.
At the same time, Julia’s brother , the local sheriff, is saddled with speculating that the disemboweled victims were done in by “a bear or cougar or something,” inanities made worse by Cooper’s apparent affection for ponderous dialogue delivery that makes every character speak as though they’re hand-whittling each word.
Despite Julia’s classroom lectures about the purpose of fiction — on Goldilocks: “Is there a moral or lesson in that story?” — “Antlers” itself is merely a jumbled presentation of awful things, the bones of a good idea with none of the meat.