Sex, drugs, and rock & roll is a classic formula for disaffected youth, but Danny Perez’s debut feature spins the cliche like some sort of infinitely outrageous horror-show centrifuge. Think Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation if it had instead been penned by body horror master David Cronenberg circa Videodrome and then psychedelically art directed by the gang behind 1987’s gross-out classic Street Trash, and you’re in the gory ball trailer park. Once seen, it’s a tough one to unsee, but a sickly-sweet Halloween treat nevertheless.
”I can’t be pregnant. It’s not my style,” says perpetually bong, blow, and booze-loaded antiheroine Lou (Lyonne) to her presumed best pal Sadie (Sevigny) after a blotto night out at an abandoned Detroit warehouse bacchanal. Turns out, she may be more right than she realizes after trenchcoated X-Files extras (led by a menacing Edwards) begin creeping around her trash-strewn back door. Is that swollen belly of hers apoptotic, alien, or just a hallucinatory product of her drug-addled and emotionally damaged mindset? And does it matter in the context of the larger nightmare at hand?
Yeah, it does. Antibirth’s crazy vibe initially comes across as a post-millennial splatterpunk barrage of guts, guns, and girls gone wild – sorry, no God here. But Perez, who also scripted, includes enough sly social subtext about the blasted American dream, the grasping claws of regional poverty, and the man vs. woman dynamic amidst what feels for all the world like the End Times, that audiences in the mood can root out a deeper darkness beneath the film’s multiple strata of good ol’ weirdness.
It’s a scrappy debut with a standout performance from Lyonne, who manages to be sympathetic even while she drinks her way into further circles of hell, and a terrific return to form for Meg Tilly as well. Perez is a director to keep an eye on, for sure.
This article appears in Trump-kin.