The premise of Antichrist came when it's director Lars von Trier decided to write a film to break a deep depression. It must have been one hell of a dark depression. The film centres solely around a nameless couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) whose son dies while they are involved in the act of passion. The grieving couple retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping a return to Eden will repair their broken hearts and disintegration of their marriage. As the he-character, a therapist, in desperation breaks the code of trying to treat his own wife, nature literally (with cameos from the creatures of the forest) begins to takes its course and things go from bad to absolutley terrible.

When acting agents received the script for the film they must have run a mile from von Trier when they discovered what was in store for the two leads. The humiliation and anguish Emily Watson suffered in Breaking the Waves, the rape Nicole Kidman endured in Dogville, and Bjork's shattering experience on death row in Dancer in the Dark, all seem a tad on the tame side, in comparison to what Charotte Gainsbourg does and is subjected to in Antichrist.  

The primal force of sex that makes leads us to our less civilised state is explored with the onus on the evil implications of it. It is after all a horror film. In his extremely sexually explicit and pitch black psychological nightmare, von Trier uses horrific and brash shocks influenced by Japanese horror flicks (including, instantly the most famous scene involving a pair of scissors ever committed to film), while the eeriness of 1970 horror films such as The Omen underpins the action.

With it's diabolically brutal set pieces - that will never get past the Australian censorship board to cinemas - it's easy to overlook the fact it's also a stunningly crafted and shot film.

With Antichrist Cannes has had it's first true scandal, provoking the usual chorus of boos at the end of the applause that greeted the film's first press screening. The bar for being the most talked about film at festival has been set impossibly high.

- David Michael, Cannes

You can watch the Antichrist movie trailer here on TheVine.