Antlers Featurette Explores the Horror Film's Wendigo Mythology

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic throwing the entertainment world -- and especially the movie release schedule -- into a state of flux, horror fans will have to wait until February 2021 to see Antlers on the big screen, but thanks to a new, short featurette debuted during hte film's Comic-Con@Home panel last weekend, they don't have to wait to get into the Wendigo mythology that inspires the film's tale (via Bloody Disgusting).

The film's panel on Saturday, opened up with the featurette which explains a bit about the Native American mythology of the Wendigo, described by First Nations consultant Chris Eyre as an allegory "where there's a spirit that comes to reconcile what the people are doing incorrectly." The featurette also offers bits of new footage of the film as well. You can check it out for yourself in the opening minutes of the panel in the video above.

In Antlers, a small-town Oregon teacher (Keri Russell) and her brother (Jesse Plemons), the local sheriff, discover that a young student (Jeremy T. Thomas) is harboring a dangerous secret with frightening consequences. A trailer for the film goes a bit further and reveals that the secret is someone close to the young boy is possessed by the Wendigo and it's up to the boy to bring them their meals that just so happen to be other people in town.

Antlers also stars Graham Greene, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane, and Amy Madigan. It is directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Hostiles), with a script from Cooper, C. Henry Chaisson, and Channel Zero creator Nick Antosca. The film is adapted from Antosca's short story "The Quiet Boy", which was first published in January of 2019.

"I was so influenced early on by the work of John Carpenter, like Halloween, or certainly The Exorcist which is a favorite of mine, or even Tarkovsky's Stalker," Cooper shared in a previous interview. "So I'm able to bring all of that into one film which is exciting."

"[Producer Guillermo del Toro] said I've obviously never seen you direct a horror film, but there's a lot of horrific moments in your movies, so I'm more interested in someone who doesn't work in that genre to step into it," Cooper continued. "Which is I guess a bit like Friedkin in a sense, having not directing in that genre before he took on The Exorcist. So I find that exciting, I've made my musical of sorts and my personal film with Out of the Furnace and my anti-gangster gangster movie, and then the Western… [Guillermo is] fantastic and so supportive and wildly imaginative, so it's really been a great collaboration. I'm very fortunate that he asked me to do this."

Antlers is currently scheduled to be released on February 19, 2021.

What do you think about the featurette? Let us know in the comments.