Danish auteur Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots) has long been a controversial figure, and Antichrist, with its explicit genital mutilation, is hardly aimed at the multiplex audience. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play nameless characters who make love while their unattended toddler son climbs out a window and falls to his death. Dafoe is a therapist and he attempts to make his partner come to terms with her grief by retreating to the woods and a cabin called Eden, where Gainsbourg previously worked on a research project on witchcraft. But instead of deconstructing the notion of women as evil, she has apparently embraced it. The film is at times revolting, silly (a talking fox), even tedious. A paper-thin plot and allegedly misogynist perspective also invite derision. But von Trier ultimately creates a grey, foreboding world that possesses the otherworldly atmosphere of a dark fairy tale, and then mounts a battle of the sexes that will haunt viewers long after the grisly denouement.

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.