Why Antlers director Scott Cooper would not have made horror film without Guillermo del Toro's help

Director Scott Cooper is well known for bringing us dramas like Crazy Heart and Black Mass, but with his new movie Antlers, the filmmaker is planting both of his feet in the bloody realm of horror.

The film stars Keri Russell as Julia, a teacher in a small Oregon town, and Jeremy T. Thomas as a young boy with a terrible secret related to the First Nation mythological creature known as the Wendigo.

"Keri Russell's character moved away for some 20 years to Santa Cruz, Calif., and after the death of her father she moves back to reunite and reconnect with her younger brother, played by Jessie Plemons, who is a small-town sheriff," Cooper said when EW visited the Vancouver set of the film in the fall of 2018. "One of the students in her class harbors a dark secret, but a secret that she can relate to on a familial level. The film deals with the Native American Wendigo mythology and [one of the] physical attributes of the Wendigo is its rack of antlers, and that's about as far as I think I can go."

The film's cast also includes First Nations actor Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves, Wind River), who plays a former sheriff in Cooper's movie.

"Oh, he's fantastic," praised the director. "I really like actors who can say a great deal without a lot of dialogue because my films don't contain a lot of dialogue and this one certainly doesn't. He is a man of great humility and one who cares deeply about Native American and First Nations issues and [he] felt like the perfect choice to help tell a story about a Native American mythology."

Antlers is produced by The Shape of Water director Guillermo del Toro, who is, of course, no stranger to horror, and recruited Cooper to oversee the movie after the pair chatted at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival.

"He said to me, 'Scott, your last three films, Hostiles, Black Mass, and Out of the Furnace, have been horror films and no one knows it,'" Cooper recalled. "He said, 'I love the way you create dread and tension, have you ever considered directing a horror film?' And I said, 'I would love to.' I've always loved Ridley's Alien and Friedkin's The Exorcist and Tarkovsky's Stalker. So I thought, how can I work in that genre and also have something to say about this society in which we live? I think some of the best horror always has certain social commentary. Fortunately, I was given the green light to reimagine the screenplay do that and to tell a story about the decay of America. Antlers deals with historical trauma and environmental degradation and addiction, ancestral spirits — all the sort of things that hopefully are very subtly laced [throughout the film], but bespeak a very divided America in which we find ourselves."

Cooper collaborated closely with the famously monster-loving del Toro over the look of the film's creature.

"He is supportive in every facet of filmmaking, from screenplay to casting, to locations, crew," said Cooper. "But most importantly, he is a master of the genre, he is a master of monster creations. There is a Wendigo that's going to appear in this film, and I don't know that I would have made the film if not for Guillermo's involvement. He knows who the best craft people are, he has such an encyclopedic mind for monsters, and how we can create something new and original, which is what you always want to create. He's been a remarkable ally and I've loved working with him every minute."

Antlers hits theaters on Oct. 29.

Watch the trailer for Antlers above.

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