The Antenna (2019) User Reviews

So much potential, so little realization

[Surecure · 3/10 · 15 September 2019]

I saw this at TIFF last week and it was one that I really had high hopes for. The trailer was compelling, the description of it drawing from artists such as David Cronenberg (one of my favourites) certainly piqued my interests, and that it was out of Turkey made it stand out as a top of film I hadn't seen come out of that region.

Sadly, this is one of those unfortunate cases of a very talented visual director clearly not caring enough about narrative or performance to give his film any emotional weight. The story is bare-bones, disjointed, and to be frank has no sense of establishing a believable reality. It's a gift with beautiful packaging where the box is empty inside.

Directors such as David Lynch frequently go into the realm of the ambiguous. However, they always have a narrative line from beginning to end built around memorable characters. The Antenna has none of this. The characters are unrelatable in every fashion to the point where you don't care what happens to them in the least, the situations have no grounding in any set reality, and by the end of the film the only events one can remember are the inciting moment and the event that leads up to the conclusion. One could literally replace parts of the film with anything else and it wouldn't make a single difference to the meaning or the outcome.

Additionally, the cast was seemingly given no direction to make anything even remotely interesting. Near the beginning of the film, the main character goes onto a roof to investigate something and actually walks right to the focal point without looking around for even a second or examining anything. At that point, I was fairly convinced I had seen the height of what the performances in the film would entail. Sadly, I was right.

The film is filled with these paint-by-numbers performances where it is clear the director simply wanted to go through the actions so he could get to a cool camera shot. Encouraging -or even allowing- the performers to explore might actually have saved some of this film. But with an almost non-existent story and actors being given practically no time to perform let alone emote, any emotional weight that could have been was lost.

I will give credit to the director for having a good eye. Quite a number of sequences and camera shots were very unique and well laid out. There were some creative choices in how to present scenes that lend me to believe this director has a future on the visual side. However, he has a long way to go in terms knowing how to build a compelling narrative and how to work with actors to achieve great performances.

to long

[zombie84-1 · 2/10 · 15 July 2021]

Trailer was better this movie was to drawn out. And very boring.

Good Enough

[yusufpiskin · 7/10 · 21 July 2021]

The movie has been severely abused. Orcun Behram should get used to it. Because all directors who make horror / dystopian films are exposed to such injustices. Horror cinema / literature is still not considered art literature / by some bigots. I personally liked the movie with its editing and cinematography.

A stimulating political horror

[Ansango · 7/10 · 12 July 2023]

On the surface, THE ANTENNA is a haunted house movie where an entire apartment block is haunted by a mysterious entity that manifests as a slimy black goo-like substance. But if you take a deeper look, it's a stinging political allegory about the complete absence of individual and civil liberties in a totalitarian regime.

The story is about Mehmet, a superintendent of a decaying apartment complex where a radical new broadcasting system is being installed, through which the government can broadcast directly and at any time inside every house, thus reaching a larger audience for their propagandist program. An engineer arrives to install the antenna needed for the broadcast, and he dies by slipping off the roof. Soon after the installation, a mysterious black goo starts to infest the whole apartment whose source seems to be the newly installed antenna. Soon the inhabitants start to die and when the broadcast happens at midnight, people start turning into faceless monstrosities, where their faces lose all human features but the rest of their bodies remain the same.

If you read between the lines, it's a deep subtextual tale of human oppression. The goo signifies the over-reaching influence of the government's power and the faceless monstrosities are humans who have lost all their freedom and are just a tool for the authorities to abuse and use them as a cog in the wheel, where they are destined to be exploited their whole life without any recognition, and die an anonymous death without any honour or dignity.

There is a sense of loneliness and helplessness that emanates from every frame in which our protagonist Mehmet is present. When he is talking to Yasemin(a resident of the apartment and his only companion) about the death of the engineer, Yasemin says dialogues like "Maybe he is better off dead. The guy got in time." These are very poignant dialogues that clearly describe the futile state of existence people are leading under an all-powerful authority where individualism and self-expression have no place.

Mehmet is like an indifferent individual who has accepted his fate but Yasemin is a defiant individual who wants to break free from the societal norm. In fact, she is the only character in the whole film that challenges the rule and wants her own way of life. Alas! She too is neutralised in the end by the very system she was trying to escape. She wasn't able to achieve her goals but at least her death triggers a positive change as Mehmet, who was earlier a detached individual, becomes an active participant in the rebellion.

Mr Cihan is a representative of the government who lives in the same apartment and his apathetic behaviour toward everyone including the death of an individual who was doing the same government's work(the engineer) perfectly mirrors the higher authority he serves, that the government doesn't care about the masses, they are only here to take advantage and serve their own agenda, an agenda where the goodwill of citizens has no place. In the climax of the film, he is killed by Mehmet in a brilliantly shot scene signifying that no matter how powerful the regime becomes, there are bound to be people who'll always defy the oppressors and stage a rebellion. The path of the rebellion won't be easy as he is surrounded by those faceless monstrosities, but someone has to pursue this path and make way for others to follow.

Not only on a storytelling level but this film is technically also very robust with great sound design and impeccable camerawork. The beginning 1/3rd of the film is almost entirely captured in wide shots which perfectly implies the alienation of people from society. But with the gradual passing of time, the frames keep getting cramped as our protagonist along with all the residents get stuck in the nightmarish situation. The pace could have been a bit brisker as sometimes the camera lingers for too long rather than progressing to the next scene. The surreal elements of the film aren't properly fleshed out either. The film also takes way too much time building anticipation but delivers very little on its buildup, and for a casual horror fan, the film might even seem anticlimactic. But these minor issues aren't a deal-breaker in any way.

If you want your film to have a biting political edge, this is a perfect film for you. This is a film that seamlessly blends political commentary with supernatural horror.

Is this film great? - Absolutely not!

Does this give you food for thought? - Hell yes!

Don't use the water

[mattiasflgrtll6 · 10/10 · 31 January 2020]

The Turkish government starts installing new TV antennas all over the country in preparation for the state-mandated propaganda show The Night Bulletin. Mehmet, who works as a superintendent at an apartment complex gets the job of supervising the installation of it. But strange things start happening right away. A tenant falls off the edge of the roof, and a thick, black slimy subtance begins penetrating every area of the building. And he's the only one who seems to notice something's wrong...

This is one very spooky sci-fi thriller. You're really drawn into this bleak, uncompromising world where everything is tightly controlled and any unfortunate mishaps are quickly brushed over. When one of tenants fall off a roof taking a look at the antenna, nobody seems to care how exactly that happened. "Work accident" is the only explanation given. This nonchalance over a tragedy is pretty eerie right away. Even Mehmet doesn't question it at first, only hoping he can stop dozing off at work all the time.

The cinematography contributes a great deal to the unsettling atmosphere. The attention is directed to every weird thing that's going on, most of all the disgusting black liquid penetrating every area of the building. The night time scenes are darkly lit, but never hard to follow. Every storage room have a very haunting look, like nobody has been in there for years.

The music is terrific throughout. It sells you on the creepiness and danger of the situation. You also get stressed at various moments when a character is in danger and the soundtrack increases the tension. Not to mention the sound design, they did a great job of making the black liquid sound just as gross as it looks.

Ihsan Öhal, gives a good mostly muted performance. Much like the audience, he's simply an observer. Once Mehmet takes matters into his own hands and has to do some deep digging of his own after getting ignored, he gets more and more emotionally affected by the horror that's been unleashed, and he portrays this transformation very convincingly. A big standout is Enis Yildiz as Farat. When he accidentally eats the black ooze as it penetrates his food, he goes from a regular family father to a coldblooded psychopath. The look in Yildiz' eyes as he menacingly walks around with a scissor is the creepiest thing in the entire movie. The part where daughter Cemile hides in the wardrobe hoping she won't be discovered is especially intense. Elif Cakman is good as Cemile, at her strongest when she tries to flee from her father. The final scene Cemile's in really stayed with me. Farat stabs her in the back with a scissor and you presume she dies from her wounds. Then she turns out to be alive, but instead of making out of there slowly dies, her breath slowly being taken away as she gasps in a raspy voice. It's absolutely terrifying.

The social commentary is woven into the story very well. People get so brainwashed by The Night Bulletin that they don't notice the black liquid slowly reaching and killing them. And as Mehmet finds out, they already know about the black substance reaching the building. It was planned from the start. The faceless individuals you see in the last act represent those who've had their voices and individuality taken away completely, now nothing more than servants for the government. A message about the importance behind freedom of expression has rarely been communicated as effectively.

This has all the makings of a future cult classic. Hopefully more people will be as enthralled by it as I was.