Antichrist is divided into four chapters, a prologue and epilogue. During the prologue a nameless couple, who are billed as He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg),are having sex, leaving their baby son unattended. The baby climbs out of its cot, reaches a window and then falls to its death. Both of the parents grieve heavily for their son but it is She who is most affected, slipping deeper into depression. He, who is a therapist, disregards her doctor and the medication given to her. Instead He decides to take her to a cabin in the woodlands, a place called Eden, where She was last with their child, trying to finish her writing. He attempts to treat her himself with a number of psychological exercises, but there is something terribly ominous brewing inside Eden.

The first chapter to Lars Von Trier's Antichrist entitled 'Grief' remains compelling because of its authenticity and gritty sense of realism. The aesthetic qualities of the film and Gainsbourg's performance craft scenes of emotion that are utterly believable. Named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival, Gainsbourg displays her grief and her anger with a real sense of heart. Of the two characters in the film she has the much grander role. The muted colours in these scenes, along with the dim grey lighting and Von Trier's erratic hand-held camera-work, further contribute to a reflection of her isolation and her heartache. It is a rather personal film for Von Trier as he is believed to have written the script as a means of therapy for his own depression.

The aesthetics throughout the film are equally as impressive during the Eden sequences. The film was primarily shot in Germany and there are some visually haunting moments that both unique and beautiful. A scene where She's voice over is heard over the top of a painting-like representation of the woods, as her ghostly figure appears in the background, is just an incredible sight to behold. Von Trier has stated that a lot of his inspiration for the film has been derived from the horror genre and he aptly controls the tension through the authenticity of the woodlands, the use of near silence and the slow tracking movements of the actors. The continuation of the hand-held camera in the forest creates a sense of a detached body from the actors, almost as though someone is watching and stalking them. In one moment a wide shot films He walking through the forest. The camera pans quickly to the left of the screen and then centres back on him, almost gesturing him to move towards the rustling leaf and discover something very disturbing. Aesthetically, this is an intense and powerfully constructed film.

However, as with Dancer in the Dark, the film's narrative becomes increasingly contrived over its duration, to the point where it defies all logic. That a therapist would treat his own partner, disregard her medication and take her to a place as isolating as Eden – regardless of what it means to her past – is a contrivance that audiences will have to decide on themselves. It is also when Von Trier unleashes the films fury and condemnation for these characters and the landscape that the narrative self-destructs. All of the emotion that was captured in those quiet, painful scenes is lost to moments of sheer absurdity. When He does find that rustling leaf he discovers a brutally wounded fox that stares at him, opens its mouth and then says to him in a demonic voice 'chaos reigns'. The ghastly animal imagery throughout the film such as this and also deer with a dead foetus still attached to it, contributes to an increasingly unpleasant narrative that detaches itself from the realism and the personal grief felt by the two central characters.

The detachment is felt most significantly in the last two chapters of the film, which contain some of the most sickening and repelling acts of violence and sexual aggression in recent years of cinema. These moments are almost unwatchable and detract from the emotion and the conflict felt by She because of how absurd it is and because of just how awful it is to witness. The film attempts to attribute her behaviour to being possessed by nature, which is said to be a satanic form. Yet whether anyone will actually find that credible, in justifying such contempt for humanity and human suffering, is extremely unlikely. It is through these two chapters and beyond that the film is also increasingly uncertain about what it is saying in regards to women themselves. Von Trier does not think that his film is misogynistic and does not claim to be one either. His poor relations with his actresses over his career and the way a woman is physically and emotionally destroyed in this film, inspired by the execution of women in the 16th century, makes it difficult not to see his disregard and lack of respect for them. Von Trier has claimed in interviews that this is a representation of a woman's conflict with herself, and though this might be true, he offers his character here, just like in Dancer in the Dark, no outlet or redemption. He condemns them and sentences the, leaving his film as increasingly nasty and unsympathetic towards grief and anxiety.

Antichrist is aesthetically and emotionally an interesting and intense film for its first two chapters. Yet because of Von Trier's persistence for publicity and attention through horrid acts of violence, this is a film that remains wildly distracted, unfocused and wholly unlikable. The self-proclaimed 'best film director in the world' is not interested in finding resolution for these characters through any form of character development. It is because of this that he weakens his supposed exploration of inner conflict in favour of his own needs to shock, manipulate and outrage his audience. As a nasty exercise in gratuitous sex and violence, this is a film to be avoided.

Some while back, the consistently atrocious Ewe Boll made a film called Seed. His self-imposed agenda was to produce a horror film that wasn't any fun. On that level he certainly achieved his objective. He managed to fashion one of the most boring, mindlessly gratuitous, unexcitingly violent, plodding, pointless, meaningless and downright time-wasting movies ever.

Whilst Boll is an errant hack with little or no cinematic skill or flair, Lars Von Trier is considered an "artist." He too has managed to craft a horror flick that isn't any fun. Now, before anyone starts yelling "it's not a horror flick" I'm going to tell you why it is.

The plot cribs from some notable past masters of the genre - Dead Calm (1989),Don't Look Now (1973),Long Weekend (1978, 2008),to name but three. Traumatised couple decant to an alien environment to try and rebuild their lives following tragedy and emotional upheaval. Weird/freaky/disturbing events befall and violence and death ensues. As in Long Weekend, nature becomes a sinister force playing a malevolent role in the narrative that unfolds, and Antichrist even replicates the cries of a "child" in the wilderness moment that distresses the female protagonist in that earlier film. The images of dead and decaying wildlife, prey unto insects, are reproduced also. There are even elements of Friedkin's schlocky The Guardian (1990) submerged in there somewhere.

So we have a standard horror/thriller setup. Next we have gore and torture porn components, framed and presented in no more disturbing ways than in the Eli Roth Hostel movies. Dafoe gets a manual drill-bit through the leg and a circular grind stone attached through the wound.

However, there are certain aspects that set Antichrist apart. It wears artistic pretensions clearly on its sleeve with slo-mo black and white sequences which bookend the movie and are filmed like ultra-crisp and sharp high definition segments from a Bergman feature. Very tasteful. We also get a glimpse of erect man muscle. Wow. Daring.

Dafoe's character, an anti-psychiatry therapist, drawls out the most pretentious sub-Freudian drivel and implements the most laughably inept psychotherapeutic formulations. theories and expositions yet expressed in a movie. Looking further back, the awesome confusion that arose between conversion hysteria and schizophrenia and the misrepresented psychobabble exposition for Norman Bates multiple personality in Hitch's Psycho is a work of deep and accurate psychological insight by comparison. When Dafoe's character reaches the absurd "eureka" moment of substituting levels of fear for the levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs it is, frankly, laughable.

Antichrist is not particularly thrilling or exciting or scary, but then I guess it's not supposed to be. If it were, it would be closer to the type of film it is pretending so hard to be distinct from.

Other main key aspects which are supposed to set it apart from its less arty stable-mates are the much touted "explicit" and shocking graphic sex scenes. Which are, to be honest, nowhere near as graphic in their depiction of masturbation and penetrative sex than the first five minutes of your average adult porno fare.

The real coup-de-gras artistic credential verification moments, however, would be the erect penis ejaculating blood and Charlotte Gainsbourg inflicting severe genital mutilation upon herself with a scissors. I remember Regan self-mutilating with a crucifix in Friedkin's the Exorcist back in 1973 – that depiction lacked the intense visual detail the process is afforded in Antichrist, but the blood, sound effects and context made it a much more chilling affair all round.

Von Trier must be having a laugh. He has taken tried and tested horror movie staples and wrapped them up in absurd psycho-babble, steeped them in controversy and repackaged and resold them as a piece of high art cinema.

So many seem to have fallen for it. The only thing truly shocking about this film, considering the pedigree of some of the stuff the director stole from, is just how boring and meaningless it seems to be. The ending should have given it away – blank-faced children stumbling like sheep through a forest whilst observed by the main character. They're the audience, folks. They're us.

Still, I'll give it 3/10 for Von Trier's dazzling sense of audacity.

Here you go: Hours and hours of senseless, monotonous scenes where nothing happens. XXX pornography. Genital mutilation (male and female). Torture. Animal gore. Nothing whatsoever about an antichrist. So if you need all that in one package, all filmed in Blaire Witch handheld style, this is your thing. You must be an "art" aficionado.